


The Balancing Edge

by paradiamond



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Political Marriage, Rey Kenobi verse, Slow Burn, Sort of fix-it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-07-23
Packaged: 2018-05-10 00:33:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5561929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paradiamond/pseuds/paradiamond
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After completing her training and several very successful missions for the Light side Rey ultimately decides that the universe needs to change, and soon. Knowing she’ll need help on both sides to accomplish this goal, she resolves to approach Kylo Ren, intending to persuade him to join her. If Rey gets her way, together they will embark on a completely different kind of goal, for a new, more lasting peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One Hundred Dances

**Author's Note:**

> This is being written with my own admittedly limited knowledge of the Star Wars universe, so sorry in general for that. Also shout out to me again for starting yet another WIP and being the Kylo Ren level disappointment of my own life. :-) yay trash.

She’s bleeding pretty badly, the cut from the lightsaber small but deep on her side. Another gift from Kylo Ren, a stab wound from his strange weapon. Not that she hadn’t given as good as she got, she always does. They’ll both go home with new scars tonight. 

“Please hold still Miss Kenobi.” 

It takes her a moment to register that the healer is referring to her, the information on her parentage still new and strange. She resists the urge to correct her. Rey is a Jedi Knight, not a Miss, but she lets it go and obeys medical advice as the nurse pulls more pieces of chipped wood from her arm. The other nurse is in the middle of applying adhesive to her torn side. Rey breathes in and out slowly, like she does when she meditates. She’s still soaking wet from falling into the sea with him. Her hair had come loose and is sticking to her face. Rey refocuses her attention when she sees another healer pass by. 

“Is Master Skywalker-”

“He’s alive.” 

“Will he stay that way?” Rey asks, worried. Jedi Master or not, it takes a lot to survive a direct blast to the chest. 

“We believe so.” 

Rey nods, preferring to stay quiet now that she knows what she must. Inside her mind is spinning, images of their island burning, of Master Skywalker being cut down. The First Order isn’t shy about using dirty tricks, including ambush and gross outnumbering. Nothing Luke Skywalker, the last Jedi Master, couldn’t handle, but not at great cost to himself. 

Rey couldn’t help him, preoccupied with fighting Kylo Ren. _Again,_ she thinks, bitterly, though this time he had managed to track them down to their small world rather than finding her out in the galaxy, ruining the peace there in his continued efforts to capture or kill her. It seems that his master’s orders change from time to time when it comes to Rey. She isn’t sure anymore what Kylo himself wants. She senses the confused and conflicting intentions in him every time they encounter each other, which is becoming a more and more frequent occurrence. 

This most recent fight had been a bitter one, frustrated and messy for both of them. Rey felt herself driven by fear for once, both for the sake of the world and for her Master, and it seemed to her that Kylo Ren fed off of it like a parasite, growing bolder, stronger, but he still couldn’t best her enough to see her dead. He had her pinned to a tree, driving the strange cross flame of his lightsaber into her side, slowly. She did not scream, though she knew he could feel her pain. 

“Afraid?” he asked her, mocking her. She spit at him, and he looked so offended she had to laugh. “I’ll kill you for that if nothing else.”

“Maybe, but you can’t defeat us, not really,” she swore to him through labored breathing. “The Light will always persist, even when I’m gone.” 

He had smiled at her, leaning in closer and driving the pulsing blade in further, the scar she gave him catching the light of the twin moons of the little planet. “So will the Dark.” 

Rey pretended to shrink back and then lurched forward, head butting him directly and subsequently pulling the lightsaber from her side. She did scream then, but turned it into a yell as she struck again, this time with her fist. They tumbled onto the ground, off the cliff, and into the sea. 

The shock of the cold water hit her square in the chest and she immediately made the mistake of gasping. It’s only her training and the Force that saved her, guiding her in the right direction. She surfaced without him, but could sense that he was still alive under the calm water, lurking like a shark. An injured predator, even more dangerous than usual. It was dark, almost too dark to see, but luckily for Rey she knew exactly where she had to go. Even more luckily, although it had more to do with failsafes than anything else, the rescue team showed up right as she made it to shore. 

Running for the transport, she called her lightsaber to her, having dropped it in the trees during the earlier fight. As it flew to her, she thought that Kylo’s likely lied at the bottom of the sea, like sunken treasure. She turned back once before boarding the cruiser to see him break the surface of the water, a black shape in black water. Then the ship took off. 

She didn’t think much of them at the time, but later, when she’s alone, his words come back to her. They almost always talk to each other when they fight, mirroring their first, but this time had felt different, or at least it feels different in retrospect. They run through her mind like wildfire, bothering her more than they should, because he’s right. They both are. _So will the Dark._

Deeply bothered, more than she should be, she reaches for him over their tentative connection. The Force bond they unwillingly share grows stronger every time they clash, and it’s easy now to touch his mind even at this distance. His light is red and burning, pulsating with familiar feelings. Still alive. Angry, frustrated, growing aware of her presence. Rey stays still, just feeling. Generally this is the part when she slams the connection shut, but she doesn’t, too curious and confused to be that sure of herself in that moment. _So will the Dark._ The contact is electric, and growing stronger. She can’t sense his thoughts, she rarely can, and she doesn’t believe that he can hear hers, but he can surely feel her turmoil, and all of her pain. She can certainly feel his. It’s as familiar to her now as her own loneliness once was, and sometimes still is, as easy to understand as the peace she has found in the Force. 

Kylo Ren gets phantom pain across the scar on his face whenever he sees her, whenever they fight. He feels the echoes of pain inflicted on him by his Dark master at night when he’s alone. Right now, he’s experiencing the wounds Rey gave him tonight with bitterness. 

Rey pushes and prods at his mind as they get physically farther and farther away, and he pushes back. Still fighting, just like in real life. The reality of the situation is growing in her mind even as she starts backing out of their connection. He tries to hold on, to pull her back, vicious and wanting, but she has always been able to match him in this. Rey curls a hand around her own wrist, anchoring herself in a circle as dark thoughts cloud her mind. 

On the path they are currently on, Rey knows that she and Kylo will continue to clash until they have worn each other down completely. They can, and will, keep on taking pieces of each other forever until one of them is dead, leaving the other alone and crisscrossed with scars until a new adversary takes their place. It is an inevitability. The same thing will happen to the new enemies, and the ones after them. Neither side will yield, Rey knows this because she knows she never will, not while the struggle persists. There will be everlasting fighting between the two, she and Kylo are just a continuation of it, pawns in their own game. She feels an echo of her own sadness as she clears her mind of Kylo Ren completely. 

“You need to get better armor,” Luke says, suddenly rousing her to awareness of her surrounding. 

Rey looks up, surprised and pleased to see her Master standing in the doorway. The nurses seem to have left without her noticing. He smiles at her. “Better armor, and brighter thoughts.” 

She smiles back reflexively. “Master Skywalker. It’s good to see you up, and so quickly.” 

“Not so quickly, actually,” he says, pulling up a chair from the other side of the room and sitting down next to her. “You’ve been sitting in here for hours. What’s bothering you? More than usual, I mean.” 

She hesitates, unsure of what she does and does not want to admit out loud. Trying to say that she’s letting Kylo Ren get to her leaves a bad taste in her mouth before she even does it. Eventually she settles on a balance between honesty and privacy. “I’m worried.” 

Luke sighs and leans against the back of the chair. “So am I. Always, it seems.”

She looks at him, suddenly and horribly desperate for guidance. “This most recent attack, these attacks, they’re never going to end. How long can we go on like this?”

“As long as we have to.” 

Rey nods, knowing his words as the truth. She can, and likely will, continue on until this mission to destroy the darkness before it destroys her, one way or another. There is no other path that she can see for herself. “We have to achieve the balance in the Force. We have to wipe out the Dark side.” 

Her teacher, taught by her grandfather and the closest thing she has to a father, cocks her head to study her. “Is that what you have been meditating about?”

“I’m not sure I would call it meditation,” Rey says, honestly now. “I was thinking about Kylo Ren.” 

“Ah, the nemesis. It’s easy for us to fight evil when you think it has a face, a body that can be killed. But of course this is a lie we tell to ourselves,” he shakes his head now, eyes clouding over briefly before they refocus on her again. “Has the connection between the two of you grown?” 

Rey frowns, feeling for it instinctively. It hums away in her head right next to her connection to Master Luke, just as vibrant, just like it always does. “No, but it hasn’t weakened either. I’m concerned it will one day lead him straight to me.” 

“It might, but hopefully not if you stay vigilant. Remember, I have a connection to him as well. Kylo Ren couldn’t use it to find me all this time, and we were once Master and Padawan, just like you and I. It is natural for the Force to link us together, and Ben- Kylo Ren is a part of it as much as we are,” Luke reminds her. Rey carefully does not acknowledge his slip, and reminds herself that as difficult as this is for her, he must feel it a thousand times over. 

“Still though, I feel like we are being pulled towards each other so we can kill each other more easily.” 

Luke hums, considering her words. It’s one of the things Rey appreciates the most about him, he thinks about her words as carefully as she choses them. Finally, he speaks to her again. 

“You have always been a good student Rey, and you should know that I worry about many things but I don’t worry about you falling into the darkness,” he says, and Rey catches her breath at the compliment, gratified beyond words. She knows how difficult it is for him to trust after everything that had happened. Luke nods to her and continues. “It is wise of you to be cautious, given all you have seen and all I have told you, but remember that while the Force sense is powerful, it does not compel either of you to any specific action. Your choices are your own, as are his.” 

“I appreciate you saying that, Master,” Rey says, looking down as her calloused hands in her lap, still linked together. “But sometimes I feel that I don’t know what to do.” 

Luke pats her shoulder briefly and then stands. “You will, if you let the Force be a guide and not a compulsion.” 

Rey lets her spine bend a bit, physically relaxing herself. “Thank you.” 

Her teacher nods to her and takes his leave. Rey watches him go, getting caught up in her thoughts again but feeling less of the jarring, fearful ones. Her Force sense hums again, the bright points of other Force users and living things lighting up in her mind, Kylo Ren included. She feels them all and her resolve strengthens. Unlinking her hands from their circle, she presses against the still pulsing wound on her side, feeling the damage that Kylo had put there, the pain and pointlessness of it. Rey licks her lips, thinking hard. Something needs to be done, and it can’t just be the same things that had been done a million times before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follow me on tumblr if you want :)  
> http://paradiamond.tumblr.com/


	2. One Thousand Words

When faced with a problem, knowledge can be both a sword and a shield, and Rey intends to use it as such. 

Her Master has always said that Rey is a good student above all else, and this is what she aims to be now. Starved for books and knowledge on Jakku, Rey had taken to her education like a fish to water, which is incidentally also how she had felt the first time she had swam in the ocean on her and Master Luke’s sanctuary planet. Not that she can do so anymore, she thinks with only a little bitterness, the memory of her most recent dip in that particular body of water rising up from the back of her mind. Kylo Ren took that piece from the board. Took her sanctuary from her. 

Rey sighs and banishes the thought with only a little effort. In the grand scheme of things, attacking Rey and ruining her island for her is far from the worst thing her nemesis had done. She touches her side lightly. It doesn’t sting that badly, not anymore. 

_Not like torture, not like murder,_ Rey thinks and trails a finger over a dark page of the book she has in her lap, mostly taken up by an illustration of a tall man sitting on a throne. The caption underneath it reads, **The first Sith Lord, Darth Bane (artist’s interpretation).**

She taps her finger on his face, pensive and irritated all at the same time as she stares down at the man who had ruined everything. Before him, the Force had been pure. Putting away the negative feelings, Rey refocuses on the text, but it only bothers her more. _The Jedi Grand Master Yoda believed that once an individual had fallen to the Dark side, they were forever tainted and must always remain Dark._

Biting her lip, Rey closes the book in favor of staring at the wall of the ship she is currently traveling on with Luke. The spectral figure of Darth Vader seems to appear before her, but only in her imagination. It is an image she had grown familiar with over the past years in working with her Master who practiced openness of the mind is all things. He knows better than most, better than his own teacher apparently, that it is possible for Dark souls to find the Light again. 

Growing frustrated, she stands up and crosses to the clearer side of the room to practice her forms, feeling an intense need to reconvene with the Force, to feel the power of the Light for herself. She takes a deep breath and tips forward into an easy handstand, the motion nearly automatic now, grounding her in the physical even as her mind begins to expand outward. Tapping into the Force, she first touches her Master’s light and feels him touch back briefly, a simple acknowledgement, before moving on to the other. 

Kylo Ren’s mind is oddly peaceful. It’s not the roiling turmoil or vicious pleasure she’s used to when she sneaks up on him like this. Instead it has a light, dreamy quality. Quieter. It occurs to her that he’s likely asleep. It also occurs to her that she might be able to see his dreams if she tries hard enough, but she doesn’t give in to the impulse. It sounds too much like something he would do, like something he’s probably already done. Rey lets out a deep breath and basks in the soft presence of the Force. There’s no reason it shouldn’t be like this all the time, if only men like him would stop ruining it, but she knows it’s just the calm before the storm. 

She feels the glow of his mind, the connection as strong as ever. It ebbs and flows with the changes in her breathing, and if she concentrates, she thinks that she can match it with his. A feeling of oneness comes over her and she relaxes into her poses, shifting easily into the next one. A seamless transition, like slipping into Kylo Ren’s mind. 

Amusement buzzes down the connection and she lets out a sharp breath, realizing with a jolt that he’s now awake and she has no idea how long he had been aware of her. Rey holds her breath, waiting for a mental attack, but none comes. There’s only the quiet silence of their shared connection, humming with calm emotion. Intrigued, she tries something she’s never tried before. 

_I need to speak with you._ She directs her energy and tries to think the words into his mind, focusing the Force inwardly and hoping that it travels out. 

Rey waits, frozen in place with her legs in the air, still in the middle of the forms, but receives no response. It’s possible that he did not get her message, but even more likely that he is ignoring it. Frustrated, Rey gently tips forward to land back on the floor, one foot at a time. She rolls her back as she straightens up, concentrating on the physicality, on stacking her spine back up vertebrae by vertebrae. She doesn’t feel that much better and decides to blame Kylo Ren for choosing to ignore her when she finally had something constructive for him to think about. 

_Child,_ she shoots at him.

More amusement. Then words. **I am older than you.**

Rey gasps and slams the connection shut as quickly as she can, her hand flying to her chest. The sound of his voice shouldn’t have been that much of a shock, but it is, and it sets her heart galloping. She closes her eyes again and focuses on clearing her mind, calming her body. 

Tentatively, she opens her mind again in stages, trying to project serenity and more importantly none of the aggression she typically feels around him. His mind is like a black pool, like the ocean, suspiciously still. Rey aims another thought in his direction, holding it out like an offering. _We need to talk._

**If you come near me, I’ll kill you. I’m under orders.**

Rey’s eyebrows fly up, and she wonders why he would tell her that when the obvious best way to kill her would be to accept her offer and lure her in. Unless that’s not what he wants. Curious, she tries again. 

_I have something serious to discuss with you._

Rey waits but he ignores her again, and refuses to respond to any of her other mental messages. Intrigued, she shuts the connection down, gently this time. Her hand drops from her chest and she stands there wondering, her thoughts a confusing mess needing to be sorted out. After a few fruitless minutes she makes for the door, seeking out the person she knows can help her best. 

She finds Luke in the observation room, looking out at the stars. It occurs to her to go away quietly and leave him in peace even though he can surely sense her already, but he turns to face her before she can move, his usual serenity evident is his features. She doesn’t want to ruin it. 

“Yes Rey?”

Rey sets her hand on the frame of the door. “Master, I would like to seek your guidance when you get a moment-”

The side of Luke’s mouth quirks, no doubt amused but her uncharacteristic nervousness. “I’m free now.”

She nods but still finds herself hesitating by the door. “I- I’m sure you have noticed that I’ve become preoccupied recently,” she says, and waits for him to nod before continuing. “I must admit that I have become confused and conflicted over our mission.”

“Our mission to protect this ship on it’s way to the Republic?” he asks, clearly teasing her. Trying to put her at ease. No doubt he can sense her apprehension. 

She smiles, trying to let it work. “No, our greater mission to bring balance to the Force by wiping out the Dark side. I am no longer sure that I feel this is the right path for us.”

He frowns reflexively, but then after a brief time he nods, still calm. “Very well. Tell me why.”

She hesitates, but in her heart she knows they must have a conversation. She steps further into the room. “Your father...he returned balance to the Force didn’t he?”

Luke smiles. “There’s no need to avoid the subject. His ghost no longer haunts me, and yes, he did. For a time.”

Rey nods back. “For a time. But the just as the Light will always persist, and so will the Dark. It is a part of the Force.”

“Not always. Once, it was pure,” Luke answers and tilts his head in consideration. 

“Are you sure?” Rey asks, and he raises a brow at her. She presses on. “I’ve been doing research, and as far as I’ve been able to tell, the Darkness was the result of fallible sentient life interacting with it. It was inevitable, and it always will be as long as life exists.”

Luke sighs and sits down in one of the chairs, gesturing for her to do the same. She walks forward and sits down as well, stiffly. When he’s settled, he curls a hand under his chin. “What are you suggesting?”

Rey leans forward. “Balance. Real balance. We think of the Force as being infected by the Darkness but, aren’t we all? Even a little bit? I’m not sure I believe that anyone can be wholly pure, at least not anymore. And-” She breaks off, biting her lip. 

Luke frowns at her. “No, tell me.”

Rey hesitates before elaborating. “It’s not a criticism of you, but, maybe that pressure to be wholly pure, to not have any flaws, any darkness, is part of what drove Kylo Ren to act as he did.”

Luke sucks in a harsh breath and holds it. Rey holds her breath too, terrified but even more resolved for having said this out loud instead of holding it inside. Even if Master Luke sends her away, hates her forever, she must speak her mind or suffer the shame of being a coward. Rey keeps her shoulders straight, she is no coward. 

Finally, Luke nods, acknowledging the point. “His name is Ben Solo, but I take your meaning. Anything else?” 

Rey considers the question thoroughly. “Yes. I want you to know that the last thing I want to do is to fall into Darkness myself by trying to make things right in a naive way. Both for my sake and for yours. But I have to be honest and say I sense that I am right. Have you ever had similar thoughts?”

Luke takes a deep breath. “I have. More and more often as the years have gone by.”

Rey stares at him, captivated. “Really?” she breathes, and he nods again. 

“Of course,” he says, and his eyes seem very far away. “The path we are on is no more than an endless war, each side chipping away at the other until there will be nothing left.”

Rey leans in closer. “But even then, even if all the Jedi and all the Sith were to kill each other until there were none left, the Force will still exist, and eventually everything will start again. Someone will find records, or just develop their abilities independently, and I believe that even if that individual were to follow the Light, someone else would follow the Dark. The balance can never be one-sided, not for long.”

Luke nods. “Something I learned the hard way. We were so preoccupied with destroying my father, with bringing down the Empire, that we never thought to look past it. I never even considered that Ben- that there would be a rebellion. Certainly not this soon. Then everything was for naught.”

Rey frowns, but Luke isn’t looking at her anymore. “Master?” Luke turns to her again. “What you did, what you all did, mattered. It still matters, and I think it may have set the groundwork for something even greater.”

“There has been so much fighting Rey, so much death.” Luke stares at her for a long time. “You have an idea, a solution. What do you have in mind?” 

She tells him.

***

As the weeks pass Rey’s resolve only strengthens. She sees the crossroads in front of her, both lined with their own risks and pitfalls, but only one that leads to the result she’s increasingly sure that the universe needs. She will follow it until she either succeeds or it kills her. They need to find a middle way or commit to endless struggle, and Rey know which way she’ll choose, but she can’t do it by herself. She needs her balance. 

Kylo Ren continues to ignore her attempts to contact him, which is frustrating but ultimately serves to convince her further that he’s the right choice. He shouldn’t be ignoring her at all, not with the orders he has. It speak to something she can use, even if she doesn’t know what it is yet. Rey finds herself mentally reviewing all of their previous interactions, looking for useful threads to pull. It’s blatantly obvious what his major weaknesses are, he wears them plainly, but Rey doesn’t want Kylo weak, she needs him stable and strong. 

_Kylo Ren,_ she calls for what seems like the thousandth time, and he doesn’t answer. 

Rey sighs and pushes herself up. “Fine. You-” she cuts herself off, pulling her lightsaber from the shelf and her go bag from the floor. “That’s just fine.” 

If he won’t come to her she will go to him. 

It doesn’t take long to make the necessary preparations, and soon Rey is leaving with the blessing of her master and the resolve she needs to complete her mission. It takes much longer to find him, but Rey is nothing if not determined. 

The Force can only lead her so far, and though she follows it as much as she can, the connection between them can’t simply be used as a line tying them together to be followed, at least not by her. She figures out where he is the old fashioned way, and as soon as she receives word from their spies that Kylo Ren had left the new First Order base she follows him. A few days later Rey finds herself on a beautiful but small planet loyal to the First Order. 

It’s a reckless thing to do, not quite as bad as attempting to infiltrate the base itself, which she had considered and rejected, but still dangerous. Rey enters the atmosphere under the cover of another ship, using its bulk as a crude form of cloaking and relying on the heavy flow of traffic to shield her from scrutiny. Once she’s on the ground, on a busy commercial hangar bay, she considers and then abandons the idea of attempting to simply alert Kylo of her presence using the Force. He can’t be allowed to prepare for their upcoming conversation, mentally or in terms of the soldiers he could bring to subdue her. Instead she clears her mind and follows the opposite of her instincts. She closes her eyes and prepares to shield herself, to try to dampen the Force as much as possible so that he will not sense her at all until she is right in front of him. 

It’s a skill she had been practicing with Luke for weeks, the art of going unnoticed. Once satisfied with her cover, she slips from her tiny craft and into the streets, holding her mind clear and maintaining an air of unimportance. Some people look at her briefly, but then their eyes slide away, uncaring. To them she is nothing, no one. She can only hope that it will work just as well on Kylo himself. 

Rey moves through the streets, functionally invisible. It’s a strange mindset, and one that leaves her feeling quiet and weightless. More than that, it’s a difficult technique that will either get her where she needs to be or get her killed if she fails. She remembers her Master’s parting words to her as she goes, getting past the first row of guards. 

Luke had placed his hands on her shoulders. “Have care Rey. Trust your own judgement as I do, but do not be led astray by your personal desires. You would not be the first powerful Jedi to be seduced by love.”

Rey blinked at him, confused. “Thank you,” she had said uncertainly, “But I do not love Kylo Ren.”

Luke had smiled at her, but he looked very sad. “No? I do. Go with peace Rey, and remember, hold yourself in the mind of no one as you go, and you will be free.” 

_No one,_ Rey reminds herself. With that goal in mind, she keeps going, and it’s a simple thing for Rey to locate Kylo’s personal residence here, slipping inside on the heels of another. If they see her at all they see some insignificant girl, a servant perhaps, and go on thinking of other things. Rey is the desert rat again, small and irrelevant, noticeable only when she calls attention to herself. Due to the risk of causes too many ripples in the Force, she can’t allow herself many thoughts of triumph upon gaining access to his rooms, so she settles down to wait in stillness and silence instead, holding herself apart from the rest of the world. She’s a shadow, a shade. No one. 

It doesn’t take very long for him to show up, and at first he doesn’t notice her. Rey watches him take his mask off and set it down, next to a blackened, twisted one. She sighs and his head jerks up, but he still misses her, tucked away in the corner as she is. Rey stares, fascinated but aware that the more she connects with him the lesser her illusion will be. Still, it isn’t until she moves that he turns towards her at all. Then he stares, frowning, the instinct she’s driving into him telling him that she’s irrelevant is clearly warring with what he knows to be true about her. 

“Don’t attack me, I come in peace,” she says, before he can do anything, and lets the illusion drop completely. Kylo tenses and so does she, the Force moving freely between them once again. Rey holds herself ready to jump away if he attacks, but he doesn’t move. 

Kylo keeps staring at her, frozen and seemingly horrorstruck. No doubt the sight of her in the last place he would expect is jarring. There’s a long moment, tension ready to snap, but then suddenly he seems to regain himself. He scowls. “How did- You can’t be in here.” 

Rey shrugs, trying not to give anything way. Not her fear, and certainly not her hope. It’s not lost on her that’s she’s putting all her faith on this one, broken, violent man. She crosses her arms. “And yet it’s already done.” 

“No,” he insists, then he seems to stop himself, changing course mind-thought. “How did you get in here?”

She allows herself a brief quirk of the lips. “Maybe I have skills you don’t know about.”

He scowls and tosses his cloak onto the bed. “A bold assertion, and I’m not sure I believe you.”

“It’s true. You should know that I’ve learned much from the Light, even in the time since we last saw each other.” 

He scowls even deeper. “I’m aware of that. Why are you here? I should have you arrested right now.” 

“Don’t,” she suggests, but doesn’t try to exert her will on him. “I want to talk to you.” 

“I’m aware of that too.” His gaze rakes over her, and she feels a familiar pressure in her mind. She lets him in, only giving him access to the surface. “You’re looking better than the last time I saw you.” 

She lifts her chin, a little surprised at the abrupt change of topic. Perhaps he’s trying to distract her. “But a little worse overall every time. So are you. How many times have we faced each other?”

Kylo frowns, his mental perusal slipping. “What?”

“How many times?”

He narrows his eyes but answers her anyway. “Eight.”

She nods. “Eight. How many more do you think it will be before one of us is dead?”

“None, if I have my way,” he says, the casual tone in his voice obviously false. His hand is curling into a fist and releasing repetitively. “I intend to kill you tonight.” 

Rey sighs in frustration, beginning to regret this course of action already but having no way to back out now. The only way through is forward, that much has been clear from the start. She maintains her resolve and stubbornly changes the subject, gesturing to his lightsaber. “How long did you spend sweeping the ocean floor for that?”

The muscles in his jaw work, and she wonders if he’ll even dignify it with an answer. His insidious mental attacks resume. “A while.”

“Does it still work?”

A wicked smile curves over his face. She had noticed that he had gotten increasingly vicious with her the more they interacted, both mentally and physically. Even now as he’s trying to pick her apart he’s radiating amusement. “Why don’t I show you.”

“Maybe later,” she says, calmly. She believes the key to this is keeping calm. Otherwise, she’ll die for sure, and this will all have been for nothing. “Why don’t you stop trying to exert your will on mine, I have something I want to discuss with you.”

He arches one eyebrow at her, but the touch of his mind does recede slightly. “As you should have noticed by now, I’m not interested.”

“I think you should be.” Rey edges her way forward, moving slowly and keeping her hands in sight. “Can we talk like two civilized Knights? You have me at a disadvantage already.”

“One you put yourself in intentionally.” His gaze sweeps over her, and she catches a flash of a particularly strong thought in his mind. It happens sometimes when their minds are touching and they’re in especially close proximity, but it’s not usually this ridiculous. 

She can’t help but crack a smile. “I’m not a suicide bomber, Kylo.”

“No?” His expression is deceptively blank. “Is that not why you’ve been trying to lure me to you? It would be just like you to think that taking us both down is a solution.” 

“No,” Rey answers him seriously, ignoring the jab. “What would that achieve? Both of us would be dead, two pieces off the game board, and the struggle would continue like it always does.”

He tilts his head, now visibly curious. “I suppose.”

“You have nothing to lose by hearing me out.”

“No,” he says, slowly. “You’ve made sure of that. You must be very sure of yourself.”

She meets his eyes and holds them. “I am.”

“Alright.” He sits down in the desk chair, ceasing his attempts to dig around in her mind, and motions for her to take the other. “I’m listening, for now.” 

Rey pulls the chair away from the table and sets herself down in it, primly, formally. She’s sure that he still means to attack, to take her, but she’s also sure that all she needs is the time to change his mind. Kylo raises an eyebrow at her but doesn’t comment further. They’re still connected by the Force as they always are, the link between them strong as they both try to anticipate the next move. She links her hands together. “I have a proposal.”

“For me,” Kylo says, clearly doubtful and interrupting her already. 

“Are you going to listen or aren’t you?” Rey shoots back, challenging. Kylo crosses his arms over his chest, falling silent again, and looking more informal than she had ever seen him before. Rey waits a few more seconds to make sure he really means to stay quiet, feeling a bit like she’s minding a misbehaving child, which is a poor sign already. 

“Alright then,” Rey starts, gathering her thoughts completely. “As you know, the traditional attitude of the Jedi towards the Dark side of the Force is that balance will be returned to the universe when the Dark side has been eliminated. It is the same for the Dark as well. The Light is seen as the weak side, and the Dark as the corrupted one, yes?”

A line has appeared between Kylo’s brows, but he nods and remains silent. For now. Rey keeps her chin high under his scrutiny, acutely aware that this is the longest they have ever gone in each other's presence without actively trying to control or kill each other. She can only hope for an outward sign before he attacks, because both of their minds are now heavily guarded against the other, and the Force can only tell so much. 

“I would see that change,” Rey continues, and his eyebrows fly up. 

“You-”

“Please.” Rey holds up her hand. It’s a word she’s never used with him, not even when he’s had her pinned, ready to take off her head. Not even when he invaded her mind the first time. Kylo frowns harder and uncrosses his arms, leaving his fingers to tap together. Rey hopes it’s nerves and not boredom that drives the action. 

“As I was saying, to me, this idea of balance no longer makes sense. Each side views the other as a cancer, but it’s does not have to be that way. The cancer is war. It eats away at us. Eventually there will be nothing left of us, but even then it won’t end. The Force exists as it will, but the two side should not be engaged in an eternal war. I think that instead, we should have a symbiotic relationship. Do you understand my meaning?”

He tilts his head. “Oh now I’m allowed to speak?”

“I just want to make sure I’m being clear,” Rey says, expecting another fight, but he only nods. Encouraged, Rey presses forward. “I have an idea for a different kind of system, one in which both sides will be under an established set of rules. It will be more beneficial to the individual to remain inside that system than to verge outside of it. I think it’s clear that one can gain more by working with the other side than by competing against it.” 

Kylo, who had started shaking his head about halfway through her speech, stops moving entirely. “There is no such system.” 

“There can be,” Rey insists, leaning forward in her eagerness to make him see this. “One order, the Force United. Two factions within it, the Light and the Dark. Three rotating leaders, the ones who arbitrate with one Light, one Dark, and one neutral party. A self policing system, focused on bringing the greatest benefit to both, not the destruction of one.” 

He shakes his head at her, something like amazement, or maybe amusement, in his eyes. “Who convinced you of this nonsense?”

“You did,” Rey says, honestly. “When we last fought. Neither of us will ever yield, and we’re both just symptoms of the larger struggle. It has to end before it ends us and everything we stand for.” 

“Me.” He blinks. “I had no idea you were so weak.” 

Rey has to resist the urge to snort. Of course that’s what he would think. “Am I? My master doesn’t think so. I think you should bring my proposal to yours.”

Kylo exhales in a huff, looking more human than he had all day. “That will never work.”

As she expected. “Defeat him then, become the Supreme Leader yourself. Bring your order to a level they could never reach otherwise. Change the nature of the Dark side of the Force. Help me, help the universe, and help yourself all at the same time.”

Kylo leans back in his chair, visibly surprised, but Rey thinks he seems somewhat willing to be convinced. It likely helps that this plan feeds his own ambition as well. Eventually he chuckles, shaking his head. “I had no idea you were this devious either.”

“You don’t know me as well as you think you do, and I’m realistic, not devious,” Rey says, and then leans forward, sensing the change happening between them. She knows this can work, she just needs him to believe it. “You can be more than a dog growling at the feet of some Dark lord. Be the one that changes everything, Kylo, don’t just be a continuation of this pointless fight.” 

He hesitates, and Rey sighs. She reaches over and trails her fingers along the melted edge of the mask he has enshrined here. Kylo tenses, eyes on the mask as well. He must bring it with him everywhere he goes, like a talisman. She shakes her head. “You’ve been chasing Anakin Skywalker’s shadow for years, trying to catch up to a ghost. You are not your grandfather, and I am not mine. Maybe it’s time for you to build something for yourself.”

He scowls. “Rey-”

“ _Kylo,_ ” she shoots back at him. “Don’t try to pretend with me. You’ve wanted this, I saw it in your mind the first time we fought. You see us standing together, you know we could be _stronger together_ , but you think it must be on one side of the other. You somehow missed the obvious solution.”

He’s shaking his head, but his eyes are shining. “Which is?”

“We step outside of the established order entirely.”

His eyes darken. “Impossible.” 

“No. We have the potential to be bigger than any other force in the universe, but we need to use it to bring change. You think that you’re lost, that you killed Ben Solo and you can never go back.” He opens his mouth to respond but Rey keeps going, overpowering him. “You’re right about that, but now you think that you have to continue on the path Snoke put you on or die a failure, but you don’t. There’s another way. You’re life isn’t over, and mine is just starting.”

She looks deeply into his eyes, trying to persuade without forcing, to make him see without actually making him do anything at all. 

“Let’s bring balance to the Force, together.” 

Kylo Ren lets out a shuddering breath and breaks away from her gaze. His hand grips the edge of the table so hard it seems that it will break. For a moment she fears that he might jump over the table and try to strangle her, that she might have to kill him after all and try to find another, some poor replacement for what she has faith he could be, but he doesn’t. He takes another deep breath and leans forward, putting his hands together and his elbows on his knees. He looks into her eyes again, and Rey knows she’s won. 

“Alright,” Kylo says, very quietly. “Tell me again. Convince me.”


	3. Two of a Kind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special Kylo Ren POV chapter. Enjoy!

Kylo Ren walks through the streets of his planet unmolested, passing easily through the space that people make when they see him coming. Stormtroopers follow behind him, their inhuman white uniforms standing in stark contrast to the blackness of his carefully constructed facade. He stands apart from them, and when they walk into the trading outpost, most of the civilians know to watch him out of the corner of their eyes and not the large weapons carried by the soldiers. They can see that he’s dangerous, most people can. 

He frowns, his expression completely hidden under the mask, and resolutely tries not to think about the girl. Thankfully his audience with the Supreme Leader will be remote. He still needs time to build up his shields, to bury these memories deep and hide them away from his Master. The meeting will be short. Over the years Snoke had lost his appetite for talking any longer than he felt he had to, likely a side effect of so much isolation. Kylo used to wonder if that would one day happen to him, but now it seems the least of his concerns. 

“The chamber is prepared, sir,” a Stormtrooper informs him. 

“See that we are not disturbed,” Kylo says, his voice coming out mechanical and sinister through his mask, and steps inside. The chamber is a poor imitation of the one on Starkiller base, but it will serve for now. Snoke flickers into view ahead of him, larger than life. 

He regards Kylo disdainfully. “Apprentice.”

“Master.” Kylo dips to one knee and removes his mask. 

“What news of the Jedi?” 

“None. They have been quiet,” Kylo says, not technically lying. Rey and her Master had been very quiet about their plan, just not to him. 

Snoke’s fingers tap along the armrest of his throne. “Too quiet perhaps.” 

“Would you like me to search for them?” 

“If I did I would tell you so,” Snoke says, his features twisting even more unpleasantly. “No, you will remain there.” 

Kylo keeps his expression carefully blank, unsurprised by the response. No doubt Snoke had already sent out his search team, one instructed to keep Kylo unaware of their movements. For months Snoke has vacillated between commanding that Kylo kill Rey and that he capture her and bring her to the base, likely so that Snoke could evaluate her potential to be his apprentice. Both missions were potentially lethal for Kylo. He knows that Snoke only wants the very best. On an innate level, Rey is a stronger Force user than Kylo, that much has been clear for months, and traditionally, they only ever have one apprentice at a time. 

It had always been Rey’s life or his own, right up until the moment it wasn’t anymore. 

Snoke has fallen into silence, making Kylo wait. His gaze pierces his own even through the hologram, and Kylo keeps his mind relaxed, feeling the connection he shares with his Master like a coiled snake in the back on his mind. “Report on the outpost,” Snoke says, at length, apparently satisfied. 

Kylo does not allows himself to relax as he spins a version of events that require him to remain on the outpost for an extended period of time, just as his Master wants. Now that he’s looking for the holes in his Master’s grasp, he finds them easily. They’re small, but simple enough to manipulate from afar. Kylo will gradually widen them, wrenching his power away from him in pieces and scraps until he has something of his own. He fights a smile in the face of Snoke’s impassivity. The hard part is coming, but it’s still a ways off for now. 

He is dismissed soon after with instructions to stay at the base and continue monitor the planet. It’s an unnecessary job, and one that Snoke makes clear that Kyo has earned with his most recent failure to secure the remaining Jedi. Kylo puts up a cursory fight to keep up appearances and receives the disdain and refusal he expects. On his way back to his quarters he considers the possibility that Snoke knows of his treachery, but discounts it as unlikely. Snoke would likely have him killed outright if he knew so he could begin the search for a new apprentice without pretense. 

Kylo muses on his position as he walks. The Dark side has a long standing tradition of student killing master. It was always the intention of the Rule of Two that only the strongest would survive. Of course, they are not Sith, but Snoke has always been enamored of tradition. There are few Force users left, but Snoke still views him as disposable. Kylo isn’t entirely sure how old his Master is, but he knows that he thinks in terms of centuries, not decades, and that he regards Kylo as a little more than a form of revenge against the Skywalkers. He took Kylo to punish his mother and uncle as much as he took him to be trained. Kylo has known that he needs to defend himself from Snoke for years now, that one day he would be discarded.

Snoke will see him coming, but Kylo is willing to bet that he won’t see Rey. He’s betting his life on it. On her. 

She is not what he envisioned when he imagined the opponent that would inevitably rise to challenge him. It’s in his legacy, the legacy of both their orders, to struggle against a nemesis, the contrast driven to oppose him. Rey is no Luke Skywalker to hunt him from across the universe, the unstoppable force to strike against his immovable object, but she has the patience and drive to impact his behavior. She had drawn him to her almost against his will, making him chase her across several planets and stubbornly refusing to do more than fight back. Now she denies him even that, insisting that they work together. The most frustrating part about her is that she may well be right. 

Kylo smiles under his mask, images crystallizing and taking root. He would see her be his apprentice, not his enemy, not anymore. The opportunity has finally presented itself, and he intends to take it. Let her dream about balance, of a new world order. They’ll kill Snoke together, and then he’d like to see her resist the future he sees for them, one of glory and order. True peace. 

He leaves his guard behind and walks back alone. The building they’re is using as a base is a converted government administration building, a fortress of protection for high ranking First Order officials and those loyal to the cause. At every corner of the roof there is a plasma cannon ready to shoot ships out of the sky. All the exterior doors are manned with guards. Yet Rey had walked right in. 

Deftly avoiding others, he opens the lock on his door and steps inside the seemingly empty room. _Clear,_ he thinks, projecting the thought to her over their connection. The door to the closet swings open and he sees her, crossed legged and bright eyed. Rey leans forward, apparently not bothering to get out of the closet, looking absolutely ridiculous but also completely unconcerned about it. 

“Who can we depend on from your side?” she asks him with no lead in. 

Kylo rolls his eyes and then takes off his mask. “No one.”

Rey makes a face. “Be serious please.” 

“I am always serious. You don’t understand. I didn’t live this long because I depended on others.” 

Rey sighs, clearly growing frustrated again. She leans her head against the wall, still sitting on the floor in the closet in her meditative pose. Kylo stares at her, wondering if she had been sitting like that since he had left that morning to deal with his business. Lucky for her that business had not involved gathering up a large battalion of Stormtroopers to arrest her. Of course he still could, and he is tempted to remind her of that fact. He’s tempted to do many things that he doesn’t do. 

Rey had now had the pleasure of living with him on the First Order planet for over a week, and he has so far decided to keep his word about keeping her hidden. Most people know better than the come to his personal quarters, but there have been a few close calls, including one memorable experience in which Kylo physically shoved Rey into the walk-in closet she had been sleeping in to hide. It would have been amusing if the situation hadn’t been so dire. Getting caught now means almost certain death for both of them. 

He regards her cooly. “How can you be sure that I’m not just using you? Assuming we can even achieve this, what is your assurance that my goal here isn’t to use you to destroy my Master, then abuse that trust to kill yours as well? I could rise to be the greatest Supreme Leader that ever was,” he points out because he can’t resist prodding at her. 

“I have faith,” Rey says, but sighs when Kylo just stares at her. She gets to her feet and walks into the main room. “ _Also_ , you’re assuming that you can kill me, and I do honestly think I could defeat you if that’s what I had to do, but I don’t think it is.” 

“Neither do I,” Kylo says, though he privately thinks that she might be wrong on the issue of defeating him. She clearly bested him once, when he was so badly injured that he really shouldn’t have been standing, let alone fighting. After that, the wins and losses had been significantly more debatable. They’re more evenly matched than either of them generally likes to admit. He refocuses on an issue he had been meaning to ask about for days. 

“Tell me how you hid yourself from me earlier.” 

“The Force Shielding.” Rey tilts her head. “The user renders their presence and energy inert. I became virtually unnoticeable. It’s a skill belonging entirely to the Light, no Dark side user could achieve this kind of mindset, the power that comes from complete humility.” 

Kylo rolls his eyes. “I could achieve it if I wanted to.” 

“Perhaps.” She smiles. “The only reason you couldn’t would be if you’re entirely Dark, which I don’t believe you are.” 

“Do you believe anyone is?” he asks, for once not responding to her prodding with anger or a jab of his own. Rey fascinates him and he wants to know her thoughts on everything, even when they make him angry or frustrated. 

She hums and looks away, towards the covered window. “Yes, but I think it’s far more rare than I had originally assumed.” 

“Does that theory apply to the Light as well?”

“Yes. I don’t think we’re meant to be entirely one thing, it’s not in our nature,” she says, trailing her finger along the grain of the wooden table. “Did you know Master Skywalker used the Force choke? He told me so.” 

Kylo nods and looks away from her. “Force lightning as well. I heard about it when I was still in training.” 

“I always forget that we shared a teacher.”

“Lucky you.” 

Rey refocuses on him and he feels her gaze like a physical force. “In any case, please think about my question seriously. Who can be turned? We can offer them power, a position.” 

Kylo makes a face. “Aren’t we getting ahead of ourselves? Snoke still lives.” Rey arches an eyebrow at him and he sighs. “Fine. Not General Hux. He would make a good commander, but he’s too entrenched in the old cause. He should stand trial as a war criminal. Someone has to answer for the destruction of those planets.”

“Not you?” Rey asks, clearly trying to make light of the issue, but that’s not how it comes out. There’s too much between them there. 

“He was the one who made the speech. The surviving soldiers will remember that.” He gives her a dry look. “Besides, how would that be compatible with me being the face of the new and improved Dark side?” 

“Bad. We do need you.” Rey shakes her head. “Let’s move on. I’ve been reading up on Captain Phasma. I get the sense that the troops respect her. If you can bring the Knights of Ren and she brings a majority of the Stormtroopers, we stand more of a chance of success.” 

“She would get a pass on her crimes then?” Kylo asks, amused. “She’s almost as bad as Hux.” 

“It’s not ideal, but recognizing that fact is a big part of this entire process. We’ll be the start of a completely new Order.” 

“The Jedi Corrupted,” Kylo comments, watching her. 

She meets his gaze head on. “The Grey Jedi.” 

He snorts. “That’s far too obvious.” 

“It’s intended to be clear.” 

“You don’t want to too clear, or the people won’t support you.”

“Us.”

He inclines his head in acknowledgement. “We don’t want to give the impression that Luke Skywalker, or you for that matter, have actually been corrupted. That wouldn’t be politically useful.” 

“You have a point,” Rey says and braces her hand under her chin. “What do you think then?”

“We could always use the Je’daii. They have historical legitimacy,” He suggests, thinking of the ancient order of balanced Forces users.

To her credit, Rey at least seems to seriously consider the idea before she frowns. “That makes sense, but I still disagree. We shouldn’t use any title from the past when we’re supposed to be the future.” 

“The future.” Kylo studies her, wondering what she will grow to be when she abandons her naive ideals. A force of nature. “Not something I expected to hear from a Jedi.” 

Rey gives him a stern look that doesn’t look a bit threatening. “Why do you keep saying that?”

Kylo frowns. “Because for thousands of years the Jedi have worked to maintain the status quo. It is the Sith who represent change.” 

Rey makes a face. “Not all change is for the best.” 

“Now you sound like a Jedi,” Kylo points out, making her crack a slight smile and marveling at the fact that she can go from actively hating him to smiling at him in so short a time. In truth, she sounds like his uncle, but he doesn’t say that. 

“No it’s true,” she insists, leaning forward the way that she does when she’s trying to be convincing. “Change is not always beneficial, but we must be flexible enough to achieve it when it is necessary, like it is now.” 

He smirks at her. “Like I said, you are not like other Lightsiders.” 

“I’m not like a Darksider either.” 

“No,” Kylo readily agrees. “You stand apart. Although I’m not sure we have the same view on what makes someone like a Darksider. You’re probably picturing some savage and evil monster. A caricature dreamed up by the Jedi.” 

“I’m picturing your Grandfather, actually,” Rey shoots back. 

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Is that meant to upset me?” 

Rey settles back against her chair. “No, he’s genuinely what I picture when I think of the Dark side. Which is probably strange considering the fact that he turned away from it at the end.” 

“Allegedly.” 

It’s her turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “Really?” 

He sneers at her. “Yes, really. That report come from one man-”

“Your uncle.”

“-who had a clear agenda. He’s biased against the Dark. It wouldn’t surprise me if he made it up.” 

Rey tilts her head to the side. “So, you’re saying that Darth Vader didn’t spare his son and defeat Palpatine? He stayed Dark until the very end?” 

Kylo lifts his chin slightly. “I’m saying it’s possible.” 

“Doesn’t that mean that Luke beat both of them by himself? Light overpowering the Dark? Wouldn’t that mean that the Light is the stronger side?” 

“It isn’t.” 

“That is what you’re saying though-” 

Kylo slams his fist on the table suddenly, making Rey jump. “What I’m _saying_ is that we don’t know what happened that day.” 

Rey leans back, openly studying him. “Anakin Skywalker was redeemed. He came back to the Light.” 

“Possibly.” Kylo searches for something else to talk about and finds a flash of a thought in the front of her mind. He makes a face. “You’re thinking of my potential redemption.” 

She continues to search his face. “Yes and no. Trying to return to being Ben Solo won’t do much for us, or you for that matter. You can never go back, but you have to move forward.”

Kylo hums, reaching up to run his fingers along the edge of his scar. They need to stop talking about these topics or they will be at the point of violence again. Rey’s eyes track the movement, making him aware of it. He smirks and does it again, pleased at getting a response out of her, no matter what it is. “Do you feel guilty about this?”

Her eyes jerk upward, meeting his, and they tell him everything. “Yes, a bit. Though you were attacking me.” 

“You don’t have to regret it. I don’t.” 

She rolls her eyes. “I find that hard to believe.” 

“Why would I regret a mark that comes from being defeated by a worthy opponent? From surviving such a battle? Others who see this see someone dangerous, a survivor.” 

“That’s not all we are,” she murmurs and then, seemingly on impulse, Rey reaches out and touches it too, her fingertips just barely grazing the other end of it, near his hairline. He freezes, muscles locking down. She draws her thumb from his bisected eyebrow to the very tip of the line. “You do look more menacing now. Very scary.”

“Don’t mock me.” He leans away, taking himself away from her reach. Her hand stays in the air for a few more seconds, suspended where he was a moment ago. She blinks up at him. 

“I apologize.”

“Don’t do that either,” Kylo says, then he leaves before he can say anything else. 

***

They practice with each other to develop different skills for the upcoming struggle and to keep themselves busy and sane. It’s mostly for Rey’s sake, locked away as she is, but Kylo finds himself looking forward to them as well. Rey has more to learn than he does, but that doesn’t mean that Kylo has no room to grow his power. 

“Do you know the Darksiders can’t heal themselves properly?” Rey asks, as always trying to provoke him. 

He leaves his eyes closed, focusing. “Yes. They can use the Force to hold off the damage, even repair tissue, but only for a time.” 

“Like your Grandfather,” she says, probably to further irritate his focus. They had been working on strengthening the bond between them instead of burying it. It will surely take the two of them to kill Snoke, and the more in tune they can be with each other under difficult circumstances, the better. 

Kylo slits open one eye. Rey still has her eyes closed. “Precisely. It didn’t stop him from achieving greatness, but he was limited in his own way.” 

A way that he does not intend to be limited himself, not anymore. The past few weeks have been transformative for him. How arrogant, how ignorant, his Master is to completely ignore one entire side of the Force, and what a disservice to Kylo to convince him of the same thing for so many years. Snoke is no better than Skywalker, so convinced of the purity of his path that he ignores all other avenues. It’s short sighted, and beneath him. 

_Beneath us,_ he thinks, now openly watching Rey meditate. 

He knows that sometimes she catches him watching her, and he pretends not to notice. It’s almost nice to play a game with her that doesn’t hold the potential to kill him. Eventually she calls him on it, cracking one eye open. “What?”

He smirks at her, still pleased by his progress in the bond, and hers, though she won’t admit to it yet. Rey is a perfectionist. “You really want to know?”

She opens the other eyes to give him a hard look. “Yes, that’s why I asked you.”

“You would have made an incredible Dark apprentice,” he says without thinking, just because it’s true. He had intended to say something insulting, something to make her laugh, but it’s too late now. 

She narrows her eyes, but then her expression relaxes. “Thank you,” she says slowly, and Kylo is amused to see that she seems to be practicing her diplomacy. “I hope you know now that was never going to happen.”

He indulges her. “I recognize that you never would have willingly submitted, given the way things are now.”

“Do you recognize that I know a part of you is considering trying to make me your apprentice after we kill Snoke?”

Kylo stares at her. The silence stretches between them, taught and about to break. She maintains his gaze. Backed into a corner, he considers many paths and picks the one of least resistance. “Yes, though I don’t believe that I will have to make you. What are your thoughts on that?” 

“My thoughts are that it’s not going to happen, and you should know better by now than to try.”

“I do, it was never a serious plan,” he lies, on instinct, and wonders if she can tell. 

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Just a dream?”

He allows the corner of his lips to turn up. “The best kind. You’ll see.”

“No, you’ll see,” she says pointedly. Then she quiets, still looking at him. He doesn’t fidget under her gaze, but it intrigues him. He almost dips into her mind, but reminds himself that historically it hasn’t been the best way to get information from her. 

“You want to say something.”

“I want to ask something. What does the Dark side mean to you?” 

“Power,” he answers without thinking. 

Rey’s fingers tap against her knee. “Raw power is nothing. The power to do what?” 

“To return order to the universe,” Kylo responds promptly. It’s an answer he has given many times. 

She bobs her head, one of his many thinking gestures he has become familiar with. “So it’s not just about you.”

Kylo frowns at her. “Of course not.” 

She stops moving, reverting to simply studying his every move. It’s a familiar sensation for him now. “The Starkiller weapon was clearly an attempt to rule the galaxy through fear. That doesn’t sound very orderly to me.” 

He doesn’t squirm under her gaze. He had never quite approved of that weapon, but she doesn't need to know that now. “Fear can be a useful tool.” 

Rey narrows her eyes, muted satisfaction humming over their connection. She has a strong point to make, or thinks she does. “But is it the most useful? There are methods of control and influence other than destruction. Why set yourself up to be fought against and torn down like the Empire when it would be so much more productive to work within the existing system for the greatest possible benefit?” 

Kylo scoffs, uncurling from the meditative position. “The current system is a joke perpetrated by the same antiquated forces that ruled the Jedi. You want to talk about fear? What about the Light Siders being so afraid of any negative feeling that they throw away all of them? They banned romantic relationships, family, even simple feeling out of fear of the Dark side.” 

Rey nods. “I know. I think that’s our greatest weakness. We threw away all the good with the bad. It only hurt us in the long run.” 

“What do you see as the greatest weakness of the Dark?” Kylo asks, intrigued and once again distracted by the direction she had taken the conversation. It’s difficult to properly argue with her when she persists in saying and doing fascinating things. 

She meets his eyes. “You’re the one who practices it, you tell me.” 

Kylo drums his fingers on his knee, annoyed, but not annoyed enough to point out that technically speaking, she had used the Dark side several times by tapping into her emotions for power. She might not have killed anyone with the Force, but that didn’t mean she is as pure as she tries to claim to be. However it wouldn’t be very productive if she barged out of his room in anger and he had to kill her. Instead, he answers her question as seriously as he can. 

“Anything limited is weak. The Dark side hurts itself by seeking to be the exact opposite of the Light. Contrast is important, but as a result of the emotional purging of the Lightsiders we tend to be overly emotional,” he admits, knowing full well that she is well aware of just how guilty of this Kylo is himself. 

Rey looks away, into the middle distance. “Could we use that against Snoke?” 

He crosses his arms. “Possibly, but not necessarily. He is more controlled than...most.” 

“But if he were to say, be betrayed by his apprentice and became steeped in murderous rage?” 

Kylo cracks a smile. “Perhaps.” 

Rey nods, still in her own little world. “Our system will be better. There can be peace and order in the universe at the same time. Once we balance that Force the rest will come.” 

Her confidence shakes his somewhat, but it’s not a new sensation, he always feel like he’s on a foundation of sand when he’s with her. Kylo stands, brushing himself off as casually as possible. “I have an appointment.” 

Rey cranes her neck to meet his eyes. “I could-” 

He silences her with a look. “No, you couldn’t.” 

She glares at him, all pout and no bite and Kylo is suddenly aware of how young she really is. Hard living may have matured her faster than his childhood did him, but it’s no real replacement for experience. Rey straightens up too, still petulant. “I’ll have you know that I got here all on my own and avoided detection. I’m a Knight-”

“Then you should know better than to take unnecessary risks. Stay here.” 

Her expression hardens. “Fine.” 

Kylo leaves once Rey is back in the closet, barely remembering to put his helmet back on before he goes. He has spent so much time with it off recently it’s becoming second nature. He attends to his duties, checking in on the operations of the planet, receiving updates from various departments and squadrons, and dispensing orders from above. Recently his position had become rather more administrative. When he finishes there is still plenty of daylight left and he has no desire to return to his room, to Rey, so he goes to the public part of the building. It wouldn’t do to disappear entirely from the public eye, there needs to be interaction to maintain respect and notoriety, not to mention information for Snoke’s spies to report so he doesn’t become suspicious. 

Uncovered eyes flicker in his direction and dart away. Masks turn every so slightly in his direction. One faces him head on, so he approaches her. 

“Captain Phasma.” 

“Kylo Ren,” she says in her usual monotone. “What can I do for you?”

“I would be interested to hear your insights on the most recent border skirmish. I have heard the official report but I respect your opinion on all military matters,” Kylo drawls, careful to remain as blank a slate as she is. His words are true as well, though he wouldn’t generally flatter someone so openly if he didn’t need her. Even if he doesn't go along with Rey’s convoluted plan, he’s not self obsessed enough to believe that he can attain any real power without allies. 

“A bitter defeat, but not a surprising one," Phasma answers, and he listens with genuine interest as she outlines the holes in their defenses. “If we are to be successful, we must be honest with ourselves, at least within the leadership. We have the best fighters, and the cause, but not the numbers.” 

“What do you suggest?” Kylo asks, though they both know full well that the military leadership, now regrettably under the command of Hux, will never adapt their strategy. It is one of the more regrettable consequences of coming second in the great struggle. 

“Construction of yet another super weapon is a mistake,” Phasma says bluntly. “We should be focused on recruitment, retention of current territory, and establishing-” She stops abruptly. “Well, I am certain that the Supreme Leader has all the wisdom needed to lead us to victory.” 

“I agree,” Kylo responds, carefully slipping into Phasma’s mind. _Establishing relations with the Republic for greater prosperity overall._ She is frustrated by the war that gets in the way of what she sees as the potential for the greatest galactic civilization that ever existed, the jewel of all sentient life. It matters little to her how they get there, only that they do. He smiles. Apparently he isn’t the only one with traitorous thoughts. Less than a week ago he would have reported her immediately. Now, he files the information away. Even if Phasma doesn’t want to support him, she will have little choice. 

“Although,” Kylo continues once she has turned away, making her turn back, her emotions a low but frantic buzz under her impassive facade. “Perhaps even the very wise sometimes lose sight of reality by becoming too enamored of one particular path.” 

Phasma is very still. “Yes, sir. Innovation should never be spurned for the vanity of tradition, but neither should authority be questioned too brazenly. I certainly would never seek to deviate from the Supreme Leader’s vision,” she says, with a new and interested quality in her voice, but he can still sense her suspicion, which is also a positive sign. She has the guile that Rey does not. 

“Nor I,” Kylo lies, just like her. 

When he returns to his quarters he is in a significantly better mood. _Clear,_ he projects once the outer door is shut, eager to tell Rey of Phasma’s potential treachery. The closet door stays shut. Irritated, he reaches out with the Force but finds that he can’t sense her. She’s using the Force shielding again, probably testing him. Kylo opens the door himself, tired of the games, and freezes. Rey is not in the closet. 

Apparently he doesn’t know when she’s lying to him either. 

He slams the door closed so hard it jumps in the frame, then he puts his fist through it for good measure, his brain boiling with rage. Rey is gone. Either she had abandoned him and her mission, or she is out being foolish when she should be right where he left her. Kylo sweeps out of the room, ready to cut her in half for both. 

She is obviously shielding herself, he can’t sense her at all. Kylo doubts that any mental messages he sends to her will get through considering how much she has to dampen her connection to the Force to achieve it. In any case, he doesn’t necessarily want her to see him coming. Kylo leaves the building at a near run, encountering no one on his path. They all know what Rey should have learned a long time ago. 

He comes to an abrupt stop at the outer gate, his mind slowly catching up to his body and realizing that she wouldn’t have gone this way, there are too many cameras. Her technique is powerful, but rendering herself insignificant in the minds of others doesn’t make her literally insubstantial. Kylo had wiped the camera footage of her first walk himself. She won’t have gone this way again, she’s smarter than that, and he should be too. He wraps his hand around the hilt of his lightsaber, trying to clear his mind of some of the anger so he can think, but it’s difficult. 

Kylo breathes deeply. He won’t find her this way, and he can’t track her with the Force, but he has to find her. It’s entirely possible that she’ll wander back on her own in a few hours, but he won’t wait. He pictures his quarters, trying to focus on the details, the contrast between how it normally looks and his most recent experience with it. He should have stayed to investigate instead of running out, but he finds what he needs anyway. The window. There aren’t any cameras on that side of the building, only guards. She’s strong enough to pry it open with the Force and then Shield herself to get past them. When he had come home the shades had been pulled up. 

Anger freshly ignited, he heads in the direction the window faces. How dare she do this to him. How dare she put him through this, through any of this. 

It takes a long time to find her, and any control he had regained has been burned away by the time he finally spots her through the trees. She’s meditating again, seemingly unconcerned by her surroundings. He intends to surprise her, to shock her the way she shocked him, but he finds himself shouting from thirty feet away, lightsaber already in hand. 

“Rey!” he yells, and she whips around, eyes wide. The Force shielding drops all at once, and their connection slams back into existence, making them both shake. Rey takes a step towards him instead of backing away. No doubt she can feel his anger that same way he can now feel her sudden burst of fear. 

“Kylo? What’s-” she cuts off with a yelp when he takes a swing at her, skittering back. Now she’s red faced and angry. “What’s wrong with you?” 

“Me?” He swings his lightsaber in tight circles, eying her open stance. His voice is tight with strain, evident even through the mask. He yells again. “What’s wrong with you?” 

He lunges at her and she throws herself out of the way, diving into a tight roll that puts her out of reach. She jumps back to her feet with her hand out in front of her, but he can feel her poised to strike. She’s reading his every move in is mind. He’s too angry to fight and block her out at the same time. Rey backs up a step. “Why are you attacking me?” 

“Be quiet,” he hisses, and he doesn’t want to hear her talk anymore, doesn’t want her words. He can’t hold Snoke off forever, just long enough to kill him with her help, and if she has consigned him to death with her foolishness he’s taking her with him. They’re going down but they’re going together, just like she wanted. 

Rey’s eyes go wide. “Kylo-” He slashes at her again, catching her on the shoulder by the barest margin. She grits her teeth through the pain and draws her weapon, finally. 

They clash in the center of the field, the dynamic familiar now. Kylo is savage, trying to destroy her piece by piece while Rey steadfastly defends her position, blocking him at every turn. It’s a remarkably equal fight, both them highly trained and undamaged. Kylo is stronger, but Rey is undoubtedly faster. She makes him work for every strike, and all the while her mind is bizarrely, enticingly, open to him. 

_Look,_ she goads him, somehow maintaining that much focus and control while fighting him. _I haven’t betrayed you!_

Kylo ignores her, too focused on beating her back towards the trees, all grace lost. He bashes her with brute force, slamming their blades together so hard he thinks he hears her bones grind. He rears back, lightsaber raised high to come down on hers again, and she suddenly drops to the ground and sweeps her legs in a circle, catching him with her foot. He goes down hard, but Rey fails to press her advantage and strike. She steps back, so Kylo raises his other hand and paralyzes her where she stands, lightsaber held limp at one side, and she freezes in place, just like the first time. 

He gets back to his feet slowly, watching her the entire time. He has her pinned like a butterfly, but she doesn’t try to fight him out, still keeping her mind wide open. It’s her own special type of weapon, the brutal defenselessness, the same as when she simply showed up in his quarters, alone and in enemy territory. Kylo has no reason to be afraid, but he’s terrified, and it makes him sick that he knows Rey can sense it. At least she’s scared too. He can feel it, he can feel everything. 

“Kylo,” Rey says, and it takes him a while to decide if she had spoken in her mind or out loud. She presses on in the face of his silence. “Look.” 

There’s nothing else to do but to step forward, arm outstretched, and he has to admit that he’s been waiting for this for a long time. Ever since he got a glimpse of her mind in the interrogation room on Starkiller, he has wanted everything. As his hold on her mind increases, he relaxes his hold on her body, but she stays motionless. It’s clearly a struggle for her, holding herself still and not fighting him, but she does it. 

Rey’s mind is open in a way he had never experienced it before. They have been more open with each other in the past few weeks of cohabitation, but the courtesy mostly translated to not rummaging through each other's mind, and he knew better than to try to force his way in. Now Kylo pulls through strands of thoughts and memories as easily as he would with any other. Easier in fact, since she’s not even putting up a normal level of resistance. It’s a simple thing to find the train of thought that had led her to force open the window in his quarters, but not, he notices with a considerable amount of shame, before leaving a note. 

**You left a note in my quarters?** He projects the thought to her, not wanting to voice this particular question out loud and through the mask. Realizing with a jolt that he’s still wearing it, he quickly disengages it and drops it to the ground. He never wears it around Rey, not even when they’re trying to kill each other. For some reason that oversight makes him the most ashamed out of everything he had done today. 

_It’s in the closet._ She doesn’t comment further, but she doesn’t have to. He can feel her judgement and vague amusement under the humming exhilaration and fear from being so exposed to someone she had never really trusted in the first place. She had been waiting for this since the start, he sees that now. She hadn’t been as naive as he had anticipated, letting him see what he expected to see and patiently waiting for the explosion she knew she could withstand. 

**It’s incriminating,** Kylo shoots back at her, desperately embarrassed. He hadn’t thought to expect this of her, not even after hearing her brazen plan. She won’t be manipulated, but he clearly can be. 

She breaks her stillness to raise an eyebrow at him. _More incriminating than me being in the closet?_

Kylo ignores her point in favor of digging further into her mind, and she lets him, forcibly relaxing herself. He hears her reasoning, and it makes sense. She’s right to think that he’ll never fully trust her unless her fully knows her, so she lets him know her. Kylo pours through her memories like he once did with texts on the Sith, voracious and desperate at the same time. The early ones all blend together in a swirl of sand and hunger pangs, then the later more vibrant ones appear. The rush of discovery, the fear and pain, the peace in training. Last comes the most recent experiences. Kylo hears himself telling her that the Darkness will always endure, and understands for the first time what she meant when she said he was the one that convinced her. 

Seeing himself through her eyes is startling. He looks like a shadow at times, the Darkness personified. It surprises him that she can see him that way when he isn’t wearing the mask, but she sees the Darkness, or the lack of the Light, in his eyes. Other times he looks like a lost boy, and his eyes are sad. Even the image of him crouching in front of her when she wakes up in the interrogation chair carries that air of helplessness. She sees a boy curled in on himself and desperately trying to pretend that he’s in control. 

Kylo shies away from that, refocusing on how her impressions connect to her intentions. Her two most salient memories of him are seeing him out in the ocean after they had fallen into the water together, watching her like a dead eyed shark, and the other is their first civil conversation, his carefully guarded interest when she explained her plan. Rey meant all of it, there’s no hint of anything else in her mind. She fears for the success of the plan, but she genuinely believes in the heart of it and she wants him above all others to stand with her. 

The conviction she has in her plan astounds him, and he pays complete attention to it for the first time, wondering at what could make a girl like this live in her enemy’s closet, could make her risk her mind so he can examine it. Kylo sees the world from her perspective, the transients on Jakku who vacillate between Resistance and First Order with the wind, her traitor friend who changed his life and hers forever, and her training with Luke Skywalker, all those thousands of hours to reach the conclusion that polarity would never reach the potential that cohesion could. Rey seeks her ideal, and it grows in Kylo as well as he watches it developing. What if balance could be restored to the Force? What if Kylo Ren could be the one to do it? What if he could return the balance to his own soul in the process? 

He’s not sure where the questions are coming from, but they flow between the two of them without resistance. The answers come easily as well. Kylo eases back, shaken to the core, and feels the tension in Rey start to uncoil. He follows the feeling, letting her lead him down other, more innocuous paths in her mind and letting her follow some in his as well. She picks innocent things from his memory. Childhood pets, favorite stories, even a few moments of Ben Solo singing to himself. Kylo finds a few interesting things as well. He lets out a deep breath as they emerge from the connection, letting it settle back into the background of both their minds. He can begin to imagine what his expression looks like, but Rey’s a wreck. He says the first thing that comes to his mind. 

“Rey Kenobi?”

Rey blinks up at him. They’re standing very close together now and she has to crane her neck up to look into his eyes. He doesn’t stop back. “Yes. The Jedi Obi wan Kenobi was my grandfather, apparently.” 

Kylo hums, considering this. It’s certainly the easiest revelation to process. “That makes sense. I had wondered if you were my cousin.”

Her lips quirk, fighting a smile. “I’m not.” 

Kylo nods. “I know, but I hoped you were.”

Rey’s eyebrows fly up. “Really?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Kylo looks away, the weight of the experience still weighing down on him. He wonders if he should answer her, but he finds that he’s in an honest mood. Maybe treason and plotting to defeat his Master brings out that side of him. Maybe he’s repaying her openness with his own. 

“Well, for one thing it would have meant that my perfect uncle made a mistake, but, mostly because it would have explained the connection between us in a...simpler way.” He looks back down at her, meeting her eyes, and she doesn't look away. 

She regards him seriously. “I haven’t found either of our lives to be overly simple.”

He smiles at her slightly, mind still reeling. “Did I hurt you?”

“No more than usual,” she jokes, even though it’s not funny. They can’t be risks to each other anymore. “Did I hurt you?”

“No more than I deserved, considering you were defending yourself. Let’s go home.” He turns away, some strange pleasant emotion tugging at his chest, but she calls him back. 

“Wait. I’m going to do the Force shielding. You should learn too.” She holds out her hand for him to take. “Try to do as I do.” 

Kylo takes her hand automatically, the physical once again anchoring them in the Force, and feels what she feels. Hope, that’s the pleasant emotion. It’s stronger than he thought it would be. 

**We can do this,** he realizes with a jolt. It knocks the breath out of him. Not only does he want it, all of it, but it can be done. Balance to the Force. His own legacy. Peace in the universe. It’s there for the taking. 

Rey smiles up at him, incredibly bright. _Yes, we can._


	4. One Million Battles

Rey knows the First Order administration building is full, but it feels quiet and still. There’s an unreal quality in the air, like the breathless anticipation of a bubble floating down, about to land and break. She takes a deep breath, holds it in, lets it out. Her fingers tap nervously on her knee despite her attempts to meditate. They’re running out of time. 

Frowning, she stares straight ahead. The now very familiar walls of Kylo’s closet, her bedroom for all intents and purposes, stare back at her. The beige is an endless abyss of administrative conformity, boring and sinister all at once. Rey sighs and resolves to put an end to her maudlin thoughts, but she has to admit that she’s getting worried. Luck doesn’t last forever. 

She has to go, and soon. It isn’t safe, for her or for Kylo. They’ve lingered here for far too long. 

Resolved, Rey pushes herself to her feet and walks into the main room. Kylo is sitting at the desk, his eyes on a portable screen. He’s out of uniform and clean, though he almost always is. Kylo can’t tolerate mess for long, not in any form. It might be the military conditioning, though his long hair tells a different story. Today it’s falling into his eyes slightly, and curling up at the ends. He’s looking deceptively normal today, almost domestic. Rey watches him, wondering at how a person who had seemed so sinister and wild can be so familiar now. He’s clearly aware of her as well, but doesn’t look up when he speaks to her. 

“Good meditation?” he asks, flatly, and Rey fights a smile. It’s exactly the kind of stilted small talk he had taken to attempting ever since their fight in the field. Like most social graces, he’s horrendous at it, but Rey doesn’t suppose that he has much occasion to practice. She’s only curious as to why he finally seems to feel the need for it. 

“Fine, thank you,” Rey answers as neutrally as possible and takes a seat at the table. When Kylo doesn’t respond, she continues. “How long will it take to arrange for my departure?” 

The vessel she had arrived in had been impounded weeks ago, and the relevant paperwork falsified to cover her trail, so she will have to leave another way. In all likelihood she will stowaway on a freighter and change ships on friendlier ground. It will be difficult but not impossible. More to the point, she shouldn’t try to do it alone. 

He is silent for a long moment before he turns to her, the look in his eyes contemplative. “You think it’s time?”

Rey holds his gaze steadily. “I do. We have an understanding, but every day I’m here is a risk for both of us. We should start implementing the plan.” 

Kylo hums and looks away, but Rey keeps her eyes on him. The gravity of the situation is not lost on her. In many ways this is the real moment of truth. She has to leave him and be able to trust that he won’t turn on her once she’s gone. They won’t be any safer once she leaves, not now, not really, but there's always the threat that Kylo might break and backslide. There will always be a part of him that wants to believe Snoke will spare his life even after this betrayal. Rey has to have faith that it’s small enough not to get them both killed. 

He drums his fingers against the desk, still not looking her way. “I suppose you’re right. The sooner we can act, the better. There will be less of a chance of discovery if we act quickly.” 

Rey tilts her head. “Yes, but we still need to arrange for what happens after.” 

Kylo makes a face. “Snoke is the priority. While he still lives nothing else matters. Nothing else can be done.” 

“Fair enough,” Rey agrees mildly, watching him. “You have to hide this from Snoke, avoid him for as long as possible.” 

“Obviously.” Kylo frowns and looks back at her, the now familiar line appearing between his eyebrows. He crosses his arms. “I will try.”

“Well I appreciate your honesty,” Rey says, uncrossing her arms so they don’t mirror each other anymore. 

Kylo shakes his head. “You don’t have to patronize me.”

Rey smiles at him, her better mood returning as the tension unravels, even if Kylo doesn’t know it yet. When she speaks her voice is much gentler. “I’m not. I do appreciate your honesty, and your bravery, and your trust. I know how hard they are for you to give. I’ve seen your mind, Kylo.” 

He looks down, but not before she sees the violent impulses burning right under the surface. She gives him his time, and when he looks up again his eyes are clearer. He stands up, towering over her. “We should start making the preparations for you departure.” 

Rey looks up at him without fear. “Alright. Where do we start?”

The start and end where they began, with Kylo following Rey through the trees, stalking her steps like a ghost. This time she has no fear of it, only the security that comes from the knowledge that her back is being covered. It’s a good plan, if she does say so herself. If she is caught or spotted, Kylo will be the one to arrest her, to take her back to the base, from which she will then escape. It had happened before, so it could happen again. Snoke would be enraged, and it would move up their timeline significantly, but it wouldn’t end them. 

Luckily, they don’t need their contingency. No one spots Rey slipping into the ship, and no one knows that Kylo had seen her. She slips off the planet as smoothly as she had arrived, leaving no trail to follow. 

As the ship rumbles, Rey tries sending Kylo a mental message. _I just broke through the atmosphere._

**Good,** he projects back, and Rey catches the underlying emotions in his mind. They’re a mess of fear and hope, and even beneath that, sadness. He doesn’t want her to go, the longing for the return of their mutual understanding already setting in. Other than her, he has few allies, and even fewer peers. It makes Rey’s heart clench, but she stays the course, knowing that he is doing the same.

Rey sighs and settles back against a box of cargo to wait out the ride. “Until we meet again,” she whispers to herself, confidant in her hiding place enough to give voice to this one thought. All her hopes, her very life, depend on Kylo Ren now. 

***

It’s strange to be back to the Rebel base, even though she really hadn’t been gone for all that long. Everything remains bizarrely the same as how she left it, even though it feels like her entire life had changed. She can’t even rely on the calming presence of Finn or Poe as they are both off on missions of their own. Now she watches the people go by and feels like an outsider, with one notable exception. 

Rey sits very still under the gaze of her Master, waiting for him to collect his thoughts. He seems to be frozen in time, his eyes very far away. Rey can only imagine how difficult this must be for him, the instinct to hope warring with the weight of his experience. She had felt a lesser version of the same, and without the burden of a past with Ben Solo to complicate the issue. Kylo Ren had been the only version of the man she had ever known, and she never even met the child. There is no ghost to haunt her the way it clearly haunts Luke. 

Finally, he looks up. “You feel that you can trust him?”

Rey straighten her spine. “Implicitly.”

Luke eyes bore into hers, and she keeps her thoughts carefully calm and open. “Why?”

Rey takes a moment to sift through her own thoughts now. She considers the past weeks, both before and after she had taken the plunge. Kylo’s careful prodding, searching for her reasoning for being somewhere she had no reason to be. His mistrust as well as his balking at even the mention of faith in anything, even himself. His childish nature, the pain she saw in him everyday. All of this compared with the balancing reason he provided to her idealism. The way he challenged her, and how she challenged him back. They make each other better, Rey supposes, but it all comes down to his conclusions coming full circle in the field, finally settling on hope and the desire to rise above. 

Rey takes a deep breath and synthesizes what she feels into words, though she knows Luke had seen much of it already. “Kylo wants to be his own man, to make something for himself. I believe that he understands that our way is the best way. Not only will it give him what he wants, but it will bring him the peace that he needs. He can’t continue on the path he set himself on, and he knows that now.” 

“I can’t speak to what Kylo Ren knows,” Luke says, sounding tired. “But if you have seen this in his mind I trust you.” 

That should be enough for her, but it isn’t. Rey feels for him, for his struggle, but she needs answers. “Can you trust him? We will need your support.” 

Luke smiles wanly. “I have done harder things in my time. It is possible for those we once thought lost to the Dark side to return to the Light, I know that better than most, but I will admit that some of the conversations I have had with my sister make me wary of trusting Ben.” 

It takes Rey a moment to connect the concept of Master Luke’s sister with General Organa, but once she does it makes her frown. “Is she not willing to forgive him?” 

Luke shakes his head. “It’s not that at all. In her heart she has already forgiven him. No, my sister fears that Ben is lost not to the Dark side, but to the machinations of his Master himself.” 

Rey frowns. “I don’t understand. Kylo has no love for Snoke. He wants him dead.” 

“Perhaps he does, but Snoke manipulated my nephew from the very beginning. He invaded his mind, slowly leading him to the Dark side. Leia had been aware but she never told anyone. I only learned of this very recently.” Luke shakes his head. “Ben had been groomed by Snoke for years, molded into Kylo Ren for his power.” 

A chill runs up Rey’s spine. “How has he been able to break free of it?”

Luke raises an eyebrow at her. “You did not see the answers in his mind?”

Rey blushes slightly and shakes her head. “No, his mind was open to me, but we only had so much time. I looked for answers on other subjects.” When she looked, she saw his blossoming faith, she saw him see her clearly for the first time, she saw an equal. 

Luke taps his fingers absently. “I see. Well, to give my interpretation of the question, he is an adult now, and capable of his own reasoning, even if his mind will always be clouded with doubt. I underestimated him before, and I will not be doing so again. But that alone is likely not the answer. Snoke had his claws in his mind from the start, and no person, no matter how intelligent, is likely to be able to overcome that kind of conditioning on their own.”

Rey frowns. “I think he’s strong enough. At the very least he’s ambitious enough to want power on his own terms, especially now that he believes it’s possible for him.”

“Yes, and I think that’s largely due to your influence.”

Rey’s eyebrows fly up. “Because of my mission?”

“Yes, but not only that. Kylo Ren has been cultivated to believe that true power can only be achieved through the Dark side of the Force, or more accurately, through the complete denial of the Light. He has been raised, essentially, in a climate of fear and pain, and he bore it because he was convinced of its success. He saw it as a sacrifice to true power, believing it to be the only way because that is what he was told.”

“But then I bested him,” Rey says with dawning comprehension. 

Luke inclines his head. “You did.”

“But he was so injured and I was completely untrained-”

Luke holds up his hand and Rey pauses on instinct. “At first. But he has never been able to destroy you, has he?”

“No.” Rey nods. “And I bested him on equal terms that day we fought in the field.”

“He knows now that Snoke has lied to him about the one thing he always thought was true. In my opinion, that is what truly brought him to your side, Rey. You showed him the truth.”

Rey shakes her head in disbelief. “If this is true, then Snoke has defeated himself.”

“Yes.” Luke smiles thinly. “Evil so often does.” 

They part soon after, both anticipating being alone with their own thoughts for a while. In retrospect, Rey is struck yet again by how similar she and her Master are to each other. They match up frictionlessly in both temperament and opinion. It stands in stark contrast to her relationship with Kylo, whose very being is opposite to hers. They are more akin to perfect negatives of each other, the other side of a rotating planet, always shifting and adapting. Rey wonders if it's better or worse. 

**Feeling Sentimental?** Kylo calls to her from far away and Rey fights a smile as she passes a Resistance officer. She’s never really alone with her thoughts, not since they started actively trying to broaden and strengthen their connection. Before, there had been impressions, vague ripples over space. Now, they have a direct line to be opened and closed at will. It should serve them well in the upcoming fight. 

_Rather,_ she projects back. _Any news?_

Satisfaction hums down her spine and she shivers. Kylo had always been more expressive with his emotions than with his words. He deals in feeling, in sensing, a side effect of working with the Dark side. It’s not the most efficient means of communication, but it is effective. Rey focuses in on the emotion and sees a fleeting image of Captain Phasma with a speculative look on her face, like her own memory. 

**She is well on her way to being convinced.** Kylo sounds immensely satisfied with himself. **What about Skywalker? Will he stand with us?**

_Yes._ Rey calls up her certainty, her ease, and feels Kylo’s answering approval. 

**Good.**

Rey keeps walking, heading for her quarters at the base. She leaves the connection open in the back of her mind and feels that Kylo has done the same. If she concentrates she can get an idea of what he’s doing, perhaps even his immediate surroundings, but she’s preoccupied with other thoughts. 

Once the battle is done, the matter of moving forward remains. The Arbitration committee still has to be picked, and several administrative issues need to be resolved. Rey had been advocating for Leia, and Kylo for Phasma, but that still leaves one spot as the plan currently stands. She and Kylo both agree that it shouldn’t be Luke, he’s more important as an outside party, and as a resource for other Force sensitive individuals. Rey doubts that he’ll ever deviate from his philosophy the way that Rey and Kylo intend to, but the fact remains that he’s the most accomplished Jedi currently living. The Skywalker legacy is not right for this position. For the last spot they need a sufficiently neutral party, preferably a non-human for balance. 

Rey runs through her mental list of potential candidates as she enters her room, stopping when Kylo interjects. 

**Admiral Ackbar?** He asks, his thoughts carrying a hint of teasing. Rey picks up the hint of a memory of a young Ben on another base, seeing the Admiral for the first time. It carries the strong hue of amusement. 

_Do you have a better idea?_ Rey shoots back and smiles to herself, sitting down on the floor to untie her boots. _He’s experienced but not overly politicized._

**I’m sure I can come up with one. He’s not neutral.**

Rey snorts. _No one is truly neutral._

Kylo has no response to that, and Rey finds herself distracted by her own worries. She stays seated on the floor, her back against the foot of her bed. Her blood hums with the desire to take action, but she feels like she’s balancing on the edge of a blade, ready to fall over the side at any moment. They have to defeat Snoke, convince the others, there’s so much to do. 

**Too much planning won’t lead us to victory,** Kylo interjects, chiding her. **Much of this fight will be emotional. I expect that after everything we’ve done, Snoke will face us directly, furious at me for my betrayal and at you for seducing me.**

Rey’s eyebrows fly up on their own accord and she can imagine how Kylo grins, his face hidden under his mask. She doesn’t respond but Kylo can surely feel her shock and amusement. **You did, Rey, very thoroughly.**

“I did not seduce you. I never told you anything that wasn’t true. You can achieve so much more on this path,” Rey says, out loud, before she catches herself. Sometimes it’s easier that way, but it’s not exactly Jedi-like. Kylo clearly hears her anyway. 

**I believe you, and I’m willing to kill for it, to die trying. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.**

_I suppose the truth can be seductive._ Rey thinks back to her conversation with Luke, letting Kylo see it too. _It can certainly be a powerful motivator._

Hopefully powerful enough to lead them to victory. Kylo doesn’t respond, and after a moment Rey realizes that he had gone, their connection now shut. Rey stares at her wall, unblinking, her mind far away. Where exactly, she doesn’t know. 

***

The fight against Snoke is sure to be a bitter one and both Rey and Kylo are quiet as they make the journey to Snoke’s base. Rey fidgets, feeling sick with wondering whether this mission means she is already too Dark herself, just like she promised her Master she wouldn’t be not so long ago. They may have officially set out to subdue or capture the Supreme Leader of the First Order, but everyone and especially Rey knows that they are heading to his stronghold with the implicit mission to eliminate him. 

She picks at the fabric of her pants, worrying the seams and probably causing damage to the structure of the flight suit. Beside her, Kylo might as well be a statue. They hadn’t seen each other in weeks, but now that they’re together again, he seems even farther away. Not that Rey can blame him, she doesn’t want to talk either. She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. His face is blank, but he’s gripping his mask so hard his knuckles are a stark white. If her inner turmoil is making her sick, she can only imagine what he’s feeling. 

“We’re close,” he says abruptly, and Rey startles for the first time in months, nearly jumping out of her seat. Her Jedi training usually dulls that reflex, but she’s so tense she feels that she might shatter at the touch. Kylo tilts his head in her direction but still doesn’t look at her. “You should get ready.” 

“Right,” Rey responds, eager to have something to do other than this horrifying waiting. She closes her eyes and focuses, willing herself smaller and smaller, the now familiar feeling of lessening coming over her like a mist. After a long moment, the Force shielding settles over her and she lets out a deep breath. 

“How is this?” she asks, keeping even her voice quiet. Unobtrusive. 

Kylo frowns, and turns his head to looks at her now, his gaze distant. “Did you say something?” 

“No.” Rey smiles back at him, but she doesn’t think that he notices. It’s just as Luke said, her power had grown. “It was nothing.” 

In the intervening weeks between Rey’s departure and her reunion with Kylo today, she had been training near constantly, determination and raw hope fueling her. Now she is going to reap the rewards of that discipline or die trying. Out of the corner of her eye she sees Kylo glance over at her and she reigns her thoughts back in, dampening her Force signature again with thoughts of the mundane. The revolutionary hopes will have to wait until they no longer need her element of surprise. Then she can let herself free, and stand next to Kylo as a partner, a fellow soldier. But for now her shield is strong and she is no one, and no one will see her, not even Snoke. 

Kylo doesn’t look her way again for the rest of the trip, but he doesn’t have to. He and Rey are so closely linked now it doesn’t matter that they had barely talked since his rendezvous with the mission, ostensibly taking over the Resistance ship and its crew. He had sent word to Snoke, informing him of his prize and Snoke had directed him to bring the ‘prisoners’ to the base for questioning. But he doesn’t know about Rey, and if they’re lucky, he won’t figure it out until it’s too late. 

The ship glides on in silence, and Rey takes the time to think through the plan once more. Kylo might not have much faith in planning, but Rey hasn’t made it this far on luck alone. Resolved, she takes stock of their resources, looking for holes in the mission. Kylo is going in directly while Rey sneaks inside to disarm key defenses in conjunction with a small team responsible for fighting the soldiers. They’re a small squad of quietly professional and nondescript Resistance fighters. Their one defining feature is that there’s not one that she knows personally, and they don’t know her. That part was on Kylo’s suggestion. All the better to stay on mission and not distracted by loyalty, he said. Rey isn’t sure that it will make that much of a difference. She still wants to see these soldiers live, even if she doesn’t know them. 

Abruptly, the sound of the engine changes and they begin their descent into enemy territory. Rey watches through the window as they come upon the headquarters, thinking back on how Kylo had described it to her in preparation for this day. 

**The base is located on an otherwise unremarkable planet in the outer rim. It is a nondescript world, almost excessively so.**

Rey had frowned as she walked from the briefing room to the training gym, one week before they were planning on their attack. _What do you mean? The planet is disguised?_

A mix of emotion filters into Rey’s mind first, pride, irritation, fear, then she hears Kylo’s voice again. **The planet is the disguise. Snoke found a world that is neither small nor large, neither hot nor cold. It has no significant resources. There is shielding of course, but it’s subtle. Nothing the Resistance would notice on their own.**

 _Smart,_ Rey admits, shaking her head. _I would have expected something grander for the Supreme Leader._

**The planet may be simple, but the base itself is not. It is comprised of two main sections. There is an outer structure made of synthetic poly brick and reinforced alloy, but it contains an ancient Sith temple at the center.**

Rey frowns, trying to picture what that must look like. Kylo provides the image, obviously having seen it himself many times. It’s a strange sight indeed, but that’s not what distracts Rey the most. She comes to a stop in the middle of a hallway and mentally reviewing the all the maps she had seen. _I had no idea there was a Sith temple in that quadrant. Which one is it?_

**If it had a name once I don’t know what it is, but you’re right. There was no Sith temple there. Not until Snoke moved it.**

Rey’s eyebrows fly up. _Moved as in he transported it? How?_

 **So he claims, and I don’t know,** Kylo responds, his irritation coming to the fore now. **Either his powers really are beyond my understanding or he is lying and he built himself his own monument. I don’t know what the truth is, but the temple feels old. It is a sacred place in the center of what is essentially a blast resistant shell.**

_We’ll bring it down,_ Rey answers, determined. _Show it to me again._

They had spent the next several hours pouring over Kylo’s memories of the place, all for this moment. Rey stays very still and maintains her shield as they approach the base, willing herself virtually out of existence. Powerful as he is, it is possible that Snoke will be able to sense her existence even through her shield, but she needs to keep her identity secret and her Force signature dampened. 

As the ship gets close she can see the full effect of the base for herself. It’s somehow even stranger in reality than it had been in Kylo’s mind. It looks like the quintessential Sith temple, all hard stone and peaked towers, but wrapped around it is a much flatter and smoother structure, the pinnacle of stark modernity. The two do not sit well together, seeming to crudely overlap rather than blend. It almost looks as though the temple had grown through the outer base, piercing straight through the center of a formally uniform building. It looms closer and closer as they descend, and soon the spires of the temple tower over them. 

When they touch down in the landing zone, Kylo puts his mask on and strides towards the doors confidently with his ‘prisoners’ following along behind him in a docile line. No one stops him, not even to receive orders or relay a message. Rey trails behind the group, keeping to the back of the group out of consideration of the cameras that line the loading dock. The outer base is open and brightly lit. It would be difficult to hide here under normal circumstances, but Rey knows that the inner base will be different. The monitoring inside the temple proper is far less advanced due to the ancient nature of the structure itself, and largely dependent on Snoke’s own supposed omnipotence. He doesn’t allow changes to his palace, not even ones that might make it more secure. All technology must remain outside, an edict that provides Rey with some interesting opportunities. 

As soon as they cross through the inner gate to the temple, she breaks away. 

The transition from outer to inner base is abrupt and jarring, with smooth polysynthetic floors giving way to stone tile and whitewashed walls becoming ornate pillars leading to vaulted ceilings. Kylo leads the rest of the group down a set of stairs, but Rey makes for the control center, following her mental map. It’s like walking through a dream while knowing that she’s awake. Every torch, hall, and stair is familiar and alien at the same time. Rey passes through great rooms and servants passages, knowing that she would be horribly lost under different circumstances. The design of the temple is unlike anything she had ever experienced, and she decides that Snoke did build it after all. Nothing else could explain this insidious maze. He’s a liar, plain and simple. 

Two more turns and she finds herself passing by the entrance to a hallway that makes her pause, but she doesn’t turn her head. Her heart pounds, and she has to fight to maintain her shield. Even if she didn’t have the layout memorized, she would know that Snoke lies in wait at the other end of the torch lined passage, and it calls to her. She hesitates, feeling the weight of the fear that she can’t know what Snoke knows or is pretending not to know. She doesn’t know where Kylo is, doesn’t know if her plan will work, but she doesn’t go down that path. 

Rey presses on, maintaining her shield and fortifying her hope. She doesn’t have to know. She has a job to do. 

There are no computers in the temple itself. The control room is on the other side of the base from the landing strip, outside of the temple proper. Rey makes her way through the ancient structure in silence, passing by soldiers that never look her way until she reaches the other end. She steps through the last archway and sees that the stone gives way to a synthetic walkway that bridges the gap between the old and new base, the stone stairs of the old temple leading to nothing but a sheer drop beneath it. 

Behind her, she hears a dull shout, followed by firing weapons. The ‘prisoners’ must have already escaped. It’s starting. Rey pauses by the side of the walkway until the guards she can hear running in her direction from inside the outer section pass, and then crosses the bridge herself, coming out into the same nondescript brightness as before. 

She locates the control room easily and find that it full of chairs, but manned now by only a single guard. He glances up when Rey steps through the door but then looks back at the screens, disinterested. Rey allows herself no feeling of triumph for the fact that her shield is working or fear for her team as she moves to stand next to him. She has to stay as simple as a shadow. 

The guard pays her no mind as she matches her breathing to his, readying herself for the tricky part of the plan. There’s no way to use the Force to compel him to do what she wants without alerting Snoke to her presence. Brute force won’t help her here, but the defenses must fall. She has to be subtle. The Force must be no more than a whisper, or else it will be heard. 

Like a leaf falling to land on still water, Rey barely senses his mind, causing no ripples. She waits, not leading, not searching, just absorbing until she sees something she can work with. Then she leans down, her hands on her knees and her face close to his mask. 

“Li,” Rey whispers, and his head tilts ever so slightly in her direction. Rey pauses to make sure he is still consciously unaware of her before she continues. “Li. Now is the time to go.” 

Through her paper thin connection with his mind, she can feel him recoil from the thought, but underneath the conditioned fear, there is speculation. Rey presses. “You want to leave, so drop the defenses and go. The base is in chaos, it will be blamed on the attackers.” 

His fingers tap on the armrest of his chair, nervous. Speculative. An image comes to the fore of his mind, so strong that Rey doesn't need to encourage it. “Yes, take them. Take them all. Now’s your chance to take the artifacts. No one will find out, they’ll blame it on the Resistance if the shields get dropped. You’ll be a rich man.” 

Li has stopped breathing, the idea taking root in his mind. He sees himself far away, out of uniform, out of danger. The First Order doesn’t allow for decadence, but that hasn’t stopped him from wanting it. Rey spins his fantasy bigger and bigger, talking him into it, but all the while he thinks the ideas are coming from himself. 

“Fortune favors the brave, Li. You can do it.” 

Li’s fingers stop tapping. After a long moment of silence in which Rey doesn’t even dare breathe, let alone move, he turns to glance over his shoulder. He’s checking the door. Rey smiles. 

“Do it,” she says at normal volume, her tone commanding. 

He launches into action, fingers flying over the controls, efficiently overriding the system. Satisfied, Rey leans back to watch, feeling something twinge at the back of her mind. Absently, she reaches back, connecting with Kylo on instinct. Then she drops to the floor. 

Pain explodes down her spine, spreading out from her mind all the way to the tips of her fingers. She cries out, caught completely unprepared. Her hands scratch uselessly at the smooth floor and she fights to resist the urge to use the Force, to call Snoke’s attention to her. He’s distracted with inflicting this pain on Kylo, and Rey yearns to make him stop, to go to him, but she doesn’t move. She can’t, not unless she’s willing to ruin everything they’ve worked for. But her very mind is screaming. Finally, the pain ends and Rey backs out of Kylo’s mind, gasping, but with her cover intact. For now. 

Panting, she looks up, and sees Li turned towards her, abnormally still. 

“Who the-” Li starts to say, confusion evident is his voice and Rey jumps back up to her feet to stop him from acting, but before she can doing anything herself his booted foot connects with her stomach. Rey flies back and into a chair, knocking it to the floor and landing awkwardly on her bent leg. She hisses put pushes herself back up, eyes on Li, who seems to be hesitating between charging at her again and sounding the alarm. It’s apparently not a very hard decision, and Rey has to jump on his back to prevent him from executing it. 

They fall to the floor together, rolling and clawing at each other, all elbows and knees. She rips his helmet off, revealing vulnerable flesh and bone, but gets a knee to her solar plexus for her trouble. Rey wheezes, the pain crippling her and stealing her breath. She hasn’t fought this gracelessly in years, but she doesn’t dare use the Force, doesn’t dare ignite her saber. Li pins her beneath him, eye wild and hard set, but then rears back to punch, which is his one mistake. 

Rey uses his own momentum to roll them, slipping out of his grasp and capturing his neck in the crook of her arm as he falls. She applies all her strength to it, squeezing his neck so hard her arm starts to go numb. He flails, trying to dislodge her, but she’s stronger than he anticipated and her legs keep him pinned as he gasps for air. 

“Go to sleep Li,” she says through her teeth, straining. “Just stop.” 

He goes limps abruptly, but she maintains her hold, waiting for him to start struggling again, which he does. Rey gasps when he bites her forearm, tearing through skin and muscle in one final act of self preservation, but most of his strength has gone, and she maintains her hold. The next time he stops moving he doesn’t start up again, and Rey eases back, laying him on the floor. 

Frantic, she presses her fingers to his neck, her own heart hammering and her blood dripping onto his skin and uniform. Her hands are shaking. She had fought in battles, but with weapons, separated from their effects. She had never done anything like this before, and the result is chilling in a way she had not known to protect herself from. Finally, she find his pulse. It is thin, thready, but it’s there, and Rey hopes that it will hold, that she hasn’t killed him. She hopes he won’t have to pay that price for her mistake. 

“Sorry,” she whispers and ties him up with her belt, stuffing one of his own socks into his mouth for thoroughness. Then she stands and turns to the screens, heart sinking in her chest. Li hadn’t finished disabling the system. 

There’s another lightning flash at the back of her mind, but this time she ignores it, trusting Kylo to take care of himself while she does her part. If she can’t get these shields down, if the Resistance can’t get the the base, their pain won’t have counted for anything. Li’s suffering will have been for nothing. 

“Ok, ok,” Rey mutters to herself, trying to cobble together her shields and decipher the computer system at the same time. Her arm is throbbing where Li had bitten her, still dripping blood, but she ignores it. The rest of the guards could come back at any moment. She’s working with a time limit, but she doesn’t know how long it is. 

The system doesn’t make much sense to her, and the keys are either in code or simply in a language she doesn’t understand. Li is too far into unconsciousness for her to enter his mind without giving herself away entirely, so that’s also out of the question. Banishing panic and anger, she refocuses on the system itself, trying to match it to something familiar. It doesn’t look like the interface of the Falcon or any other ship she knows, but it does vaguely remind her of some of the Republic wreckage on Jakku. Rey taps the screen, and it makes a chirping sound and changes, but not to anything useful. Frustrated, she wishes she could just tear the whole thing apart, before realizing that she can. 

Rey drops to her knees and starts opening the panel, rooting through section by section of wire and circuit board. It’s slow going because of the blood, and if she didn’t already know what she needs it would be impossible to find, but slipping back into the mindset of a scavenger is the easiest thing in the world. She blocks out the pain, and within minutes, she has her hand around the conduit that links the power source and the shielding system. She takes a deep breath, resisting the urge to simply yank the thing out of the wall and electrocute herself. Instead, she spends ten more agonizing minutes systematically unhooking it from the core, and winds up staring at the lump of metal in her hand as the shields audibly power down. 

“Good enough,” Rey breathes, closing the panel back up and wiping her blood off of it before standing up. Hopefully no one will realize what she has done until it’s too late. Hopefully her team isn’t dead. Hopefully. With one last lingering look at Li, who is very still now, she leaves. 

Outside of the control room, things are much quieter than they had been before. Rey moves silently through the outer base, wary of the stillness. She reaches the bridge to the temple without seeing a single person. The silence presses down on her, heavy. The metal in her hand is heavy. Pausing in the center of the bridge, Rey drops the conduit into the abyss between the two sections. It falls and falls, but she never hears it hit the bottom. Rey stares into the blackness, her arm dripping blood through the makeshift bandage she had torn from the leg of her suit. But there’s nothing, and she has to move on. 

Taking a deep breath, Rey crosses the bridge and walks back into the stone temple, letting the darkness swallow her up too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the support guys and I'm sorry this took so long! 
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr for more nonsense :)  
> http://paradiamond.tumblr.com/


	5. Two Against One

It’s silent in the halls of his Master. Not quiet, not like it always is. There is a constant tension here, but now it is different. Tonight the temple of his Master is as silent as a grave. 

Kylo tries to adapt the same qualities, blending into the darkness as he ostensibly searches the halls for the insurgents, as per his Master’s demand. Of course the soldiers Kylo had brought here are gone, having long broken out of their cells, and yet Kylo is still pointlessly hunting them. He needs to give Rey her time to disable the defenses and that means keeping up with the charade for a few moments more. It’s a bold plan and one that may need revising before the night is done. But they have one advantage; Snoke still thinks that Kylo is on his side, or at least he’s pretending to. It’s difficult to tell what is really going on behind his eyes, and his mind is as closed as ever. 

Even when he was bearing the pain Snoke inflicted on his mind, their connection only flowed one way. The two shocks of pain had been familiar and grounding. Snoke inflicts it on him every time Kylo appears in his presence. It has been his typical greeting since the very first day Kylo came to him. A ‘reinforcement’ as Snoke calls it. Kylo has borne it for years, content with the knowledge that it made him stronger, and now for the last time. He has had enough of pain. 

Keeping careful control of his breathing and his mind, Kylo moves through the seemingly ancient structure, keen-eyed and wary of any sign of life. The temple hums with silent power, energy emanating from the very walls. But it leads Kylo down no clear path. The power of Snoke is deceptive by nature, and Kylo had been caught off guard too maybe times to count here to move without caution. He walks and waits for the attack from either Snoke himself or the soldiers. Nothing comes, and soon he sees why. 

The far hall is littered with bodies, motionless and in seemingly haphazard placement. The group is mostly made up of the men Kylo had brought here, though there are a few of Snoke’s soldiers as well. No Knights, just the paid men he keeps here to do the tasks he judges to be beneath him. All are lying together on the floor. 

Kylo hisses out a sharp breath and draws his saber, the red pulsing light casting a glow over the dead. And yet. 

“What have we here,” Kylo murmurs quietly, too softly for the regulator of his mask to pick up. 

There’s no blood, no sign of struggle. Kylo creeps forward cautiously, intrigued. None of the men have the rigor or paleness Kylo would normally associate with death, and when he presses his fingers against their necks he still feels a pulse. Still, they won’t wake. Kylo straightens, amused in spite of himself. In an effort to re-exert control, Snoke has put everyone else in the temple into unconsciousness. 

Kylo smiles privately to himself as he turns back around. It seems that it is only him and his Master now. _And Rey,_ he thinks, making his way back through the halls. There’s no way Snoke could affect her at this distance, and certainly not without knowing about her presence first. Kylo quickens his steps, eager to be done with it. By putting the soldiers to sleep, Snoke has tipped his hand, and Kylo will answer. In time. 

**Master, I have located the insurgents. They are unconscious,** Kylo projects, the sensation now more familiar than nearly any other aspect of the Force. 

He has always been able to communicate with his Master this way, but only on this planet, and only when Snoke allows it. His connection with Rey had been stronger from the start, and had only increased with time and practice. They can reach each other from separate planets when Snoke must contact Kylo via a hologram. She is by far the stronger ally for him, his true match rather than a Master dimly connected. It was always Rey, he should have seen it from the start. Kylo smiles slightly but intentionally puts thoughts of her aside. No doubt Snoke is probing his mind even now, trying to unearth his secrets. Kylo steels his mind resolutely, unwilling to allow it. Access to his mind is access to Rey. 

Finally, his Master deigns to respond to him. 

Return. 

The single word echoes in Kylo’s head like an explosion, all consuming and strong. Snoke put effort behind it, seeking to intimidate him. Smirking, Kylo does as he’s told. For now. 

It doesn’t surprise him to be greeted by an empty room, but it does make him angry. Even now Snoke deceives, even now Kylo puts on a show for him. His voice echoes in the great audience room when he calls out, knowing that Snoke can hear him from wherever he’s hiding. 

“Master?” Kylo pauses in speech but continues to move, shifting his gaze from archway to ceiling, from throne to door. He keeps his back to the wall. “I have returned.” **As ordered.**

Unsurprisingly, there is no response. All Kylo can hear are his own steps as he slowly paces around the room. The looming darkness covers all corners, creates so many hiding spots. Kylo continues to move, fully alert. 

“Why do you hide Master?” Kylo calls out, but still he is met with silence except for his own voice echoing back to him, distorted from both the mask and the strange architecture. It comes back to him unfamiliar, alien. 

“It is time for us to talk.” Kylo turns around slowly, searching. “You would send my own Knights against me rather than face me yourself?” 

The Knights of Ren are out in vastness of space, ostensibly hunting for Kylo, but in reality they carry out Kylo’s work as his agents. Snoke is protected here only by a few guards, paid men. Kylo has worked to know everything about the operation, and he knows better than to follow the false trails Snoke tries to set for him. Revealing that he knows what Snoke has ordered the Knight to do is a risk, but a calculated one. He must believe that Snoke doesn’t know better than to rise to anger when challenged. He had always held a secret jealously over Kylo’s control of the Knights. It’s a ridiculous fault for his Master to have. He should never have expected the Knights to favor him over Kylo, the one who gave them their mission. 

As if on cue a low hum of anger reaches Kylo, seeping through the air. He presses his advantage. “Yes, mine. I destroyed them, rendered them to nothing but their most basic selves and I brought them back to life! The Knights follow Kylo Ren, not you.” 

More anger. It’s the kind Kylo can taste, caustic and cold. Still, Snoke does not rise to the bait. 

Kylo falls quiet, content for now to let him hide. He’ll come out eventually. This is an inevitability, and it has been for a long time. 

He keeps his mind closed to Snoke but open and aware to anything that might be coming for him. There’s no way to be sure if Snoke put the soldiers to sleep with the Force or if he used some kind of a trick. It could have been gas piped through the air, a targeted strike. Snoke doesn’t allow alterations to be made to his precious fortress, but maybe that’s just another lie he told. Maybe he’s not as powerful as he wants Kylo to think. 

The throne Snoke made for himself glints in the torchlight and Kylo eyes it disdainfully as he passes. A ridiculous gesture harkening back to a bygone time when royal blood like Kylo’s own mattered and decadence had a place in their society. He should have seen this years ago. Snoke’s way is the old way. 

Kylo keeps moving, turning all of his sense outside of himself. Nothing moves that he doesn’t know about here, not tonight. He catches a flash out of the corner of his eye, bright and quick. A ray of light in the dark. He keeps himself in check and doesn’t turn, still sliding over the stone like a snake, poised to strike. 

He hears something else move down the long stretch of hallway to his left. Slowly, so as not to draw further attention to his position, he turns to look. There doesn’t appear to be anything there but darkness, the torches long extinguished. The tunnel is so black it seems to be a void, pulling in all the light and swallowing it whole. 

Kylo turns right instead. 

The majority of the torches have been extinguished, leaving Kylo to walk in varying levels of darkness throughout the entire Temple. There is a creeping feeling running up his spine as he walks, akin to sand stuck under his clothes, rubbing him raw. The stronghold has always had this effect on him but it increases with every step he takes that brings him closer to his Master. 

The halls seem to narrow as he presses on, but he finds that he can’t remember if it has always happened this way of if this is some new trick. Kylo ignores the oppressive sense of having the walls closing in, keeping his eye trained in front of him. By the time he reaches the end of the hall, he has to turn to the side and slide through a narrow crack which throws him out into a large, cavernous room that he has never seen before. 

Kylo hesitates, suddenly unsure of himself. He allows himself one moment to turn around, but finds that the passage he had just emerged from had sealed itself. He raises a hand to touch the solid rock where there was just a gap wide enough to fit through, but a sudden echoing in his head freezes him in place. 

Apprentice. 

Kylo turns on his heels, hands raised to ward off a blow, all of his training snapping back into place at once. Snoke stands at the other end of the large room, his arms folded behind his back. He appears to be little more than an oddity, an ancient creature that crawled up from some abyss. Kylo bares his teeth, but Snoke’s face doesn’t change. Enraged, Kylo lowers his arm, fully intending to draw his saber, but something deep in his mind stops him. 

In seeing Snoke again in the flesh, Kylo is once again filled with anger. He wants revenge, not for the others, but for himself. Snoke had lied to him. Kylo, Ben, had seen himself as a revolutionary, as a visionary. He thought that Snoke shared that vision, could help him mold it from its crude, childish form into something artful, but Snoke had only used him for his power. Kylo had been a puppet, a dog at his master’s feet. He had been told, and told himself for years, that it was respect, not blind obedience, that led him to kneel, to accept the pain lessons. But he had been blind. 

He was blinded, rendered less than, and he let it happen. But not anymore. 

Kylo raises his arm. In an instant the illusion has been obliterated with force lightning. The rest of the illusion is dispelled at the same time, revealing his true whereabouts. Kylo finds himself standing at the edge of the abyss, the point where the old fortress meets the new outer ring. He eyes the darkness below with disdain which quickly sours into rage. 

“Is this what the Dark side has become?” he calls out, his hands now clenched into fists at his sides. “Tricksters in the dark?” 

There is no response, neither real nor imagined. Furious, Kylo stalks back the way he came, the way once again appearing perfectly straight, fully intending to bring an end to this farce. He will simply have to find his own answers, as he has always done. 

***

Before they landed, before Rey even left the First Order planet, she and Kylo sat together at his desk as they had many times. Kylo attends to business and Rey watches him with open curiosity as he closes the lid of the communication hub. The large black and grey box latches with a snap, whirring with the effort of destroying the record of Kylo’s most recent transmission. It’s an unwieldy thing, heavy and uncoordinated, but now more than ever it’s necessary to keep his conversations with the Knights of Ren private. 

“Where did you get it?”

“This?” Kylo glances up at her and them swiftly down again when she nods. “I made it.” 

Her eyebrows shoot up. “Really?” 

“Yes,” he throws back, fighting a smile. “I know how to do more than just fight.” 

“I wouldn't have guessed,” Rey says, honestly, and very rudely. 

Kylo rolls his eyes and returns his attention to the hub. He has to monitor it to make sure no signal is picked up, not data left to steal. Rey watches him watch the box. She doesn’t fidget, her training having removed that defect from her, but he can tell that she wants to. It’s difficult for her to remain still, and even more so to remain in self-imposed exile in his rooms on this First Order planet that must seem like a prison to her. Kylo can see all of this, and it almost impresses him how she keeps herself from running. 

“Who was the message for?” Rey finally asks. 

Kylo shakes his head, feeling almost fond. From anyone else, he would have expected a plot, some kind of trick to get information, but they’re in this together and far too deep. Besides, Rey is honest to a fault. They’ll have to work on that if she wants to really be a leader. 

“My Knights.” 

She visibly perks up, interest evident in her features. “The Knights of Ren?”

 _Obviously._ Kylo thinks but doesn’t say. Restraint is new for him too. “Yes.” 

“Is everything alright?” 

“As much as it can be. My Master has me under surveillance, but it doesn’t seem to be any more than usual.” 

“What is the usual amount of surveillance for a Master and student?” 

He gives her a cool glare before looking back down, not truly angry. As usual, she at least has part of a valid point. Kylo pushes the box away, the scan completed. “The Dark side has a history of Masters being killed by apprentices. It’s nearly a tradition at this point.” 

Rey shakes her head. “I can’t even imagine.” 

He gives her a thin smile. “Try.” 

Glaring, Rey crosses her arms over her chest. “I meant that I can’t imagine trying to kill my Master.” 

Kylo smirks at her. “Why not?” 

“Well, I have no reason to.” 

“What if he opposed your plan?”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “There are other methods of persuasion than violence, Kylo.” 

A shiver runs up his back and he looks away. “I am well aware of that. It’s beside the point in any case. I am being watched very carefully right now and I need to make sure the Knights are prepared.” 

Rey nods. “What if they betray you?” 

“I’ve considered that,” Kylo says, leaning back in his chair, one arm wrapped carelessly around the back. “It’s certainly possible, but unlikely.” 

“Why?”

He shrugs. “I created them.” 

“So, loyalty.”

“Yes, but it’s more than that.” 

Rey tilts her head to the side. “What do you mean?” 

Kylo frowns at her, irritated at her playing the naive good soldier again until he realizes that she very well might not know. He shifts forward again, sitting up straight “When Ben Solo died he took his fellow students with him.” 

Rey flinches slightly but doesn’t say anything, and Kylo knows he’s right. He smiles, amused. It seems that Rey doesn’t know everything, and it pleases him to be the one to share something new to her. His reputation so often precedes him in these matters, and is so frequently incorrect. 

“You will have heard, I presume, that they accuse me of being the Jedi killer.” He waits for her nod before continuing. “They’re right, but not in the way that you’re thinking.”

A thin line appears in between Rey’s eyebrows. “What do you mean?” 

Kylo tilts his chin up slightly, finding that he wants to make himself very clear on this point. It matters, somehow, that Rey understands. “I didn’t end their lives, I gave them new ones. I set them free. It’s Skywalker’s rules that would have truly killed them, took them from bright young powerful beings and warped them into docile, unfeeling sheep. I gave them new lives, better lives, but in order to do that I had to kill the weak things they used to be.” 

“Like you killed Ben Solo,” Rey says slowly, her eyes searching his. 

“Yes.”

“I see,” she says, even though he doesn't think that she does. 

“The Knight are loyal to me. They look at me the way you look at Skywalker, they way they used to look at him too. Not even my Master could compare. I know it now, and he will soon. The truth has come to light.” 

Rey leans forward. “And will they? Will they follow you into the Light?” 

He raises an eyebrow at her. “Is that where I’m going?” 

She frowns back at him. “You know what I mean.” 

“I do, and to answer your question, yes. They will follow me. They always have.” 

Rey hums and looks away again. She wants to say something else, Kylo can tell. Ever since their fight in the field, he can always tell. They know each other so well now. 

“What is it?”

She glances back and smiles. “Will I meet them?”

Kylo blinks, caught off guard. “Ah- yes. I imagine you will have to.” 

“I’d like to. I haven't had the chance to meet many Force sensitives.” 

“They’re dangerous.” 

“So am I.” 

It’s Kylo’s turn to frown at her, trying to imagine her standing next to any one of the Knights without laughing. Then again, he had never imagined sitting across from her in peace. Maybe she will charm them just as easily. “Then yes, when this is over you will meet them.” 

“I wonder how they will feel about opposing the First Order,” Rey muses, and Kylo scowls. 

“They will be fine,” Kylo manages, his irritation raging back in full force. Not at Rey, but at Snoke and the system he controls. He had been thinking on this subject for days. The Knights will be just fine without the First Order, as will he. 

The First Order is not what was promised. That truth had come to him in hints and subtle feelings creeping up his spine, even before Rey crash landed into his life, upsetting every balance. Rejecting the Jedi and forming the Knights of Ren had been the correct action, and Kylo will stand by that decision for the rest of his life. But In his quest for power he attached himself to an institution equally false, one just as hypocritical as the Republic and the Jedi. Kylo looked up after so many years of struggle and found himself no closer to his goals, but by the time he realized he was in so deep he couldn’t stop. He was free falling, but the only way to the ground was to keep going. 

“Fine? So you freely admit that the First Order is not efficient?” Rey asks carefully, tilting her head slightly to the side. 

Kylo nods. “It is...afflicted with the same faults that the Republic has been prone to.” 

“The same faults but with none of the freedoms?” 

Kylo looks away, the better to gather his thoughts. He had some academic disagreements with the Jedi order from the start, but his efforts to question their doctrine were met with fear and suspicion disguised as wisdom. That was what had always frustrated him the most about his uncle. No living man can hope to live up to the Jedi code, not even him, and yet he still pretends. Even now, Kylo would rather be a sinner than a liar. 

“You could say so. Obviously the Jedi are ridiculous. It’s no wonder my grandfather turned from them. They defeated themselves, slowly strangling their own future with false piety and stifling rules.” 

Rey ignores his comments about the Jedi. It’s an old argument at this point, one that they had many times before. But his criticism of the First Order is new to her and has clearly caught her interest. “Then why not stop? You could have just left the Order if you didn’t believe in them.” 

Kylo shakes his head slightly. “It was too late.”

Rey clearly doesn’t accept that as an answer. She leans back in her chair and regards him intently. “It seems to me that refusing to correct a mistake is worse than committing one in the first place.”

“Well I’m trying now,” Kylo snaps, defensive. It burns him that she judges his choices, the position that he had found himself in. 

Of course he had known that Rey has never had to make that kind of choice. She doesn’t know, doesn’t understand, and Kylo finds that he doesn’t want her to. It would make her stronger, but at the expense of a central part of her. Kylo could break her, break her trust easily, but he doesn’t want to, not anymore. He holds it carefully in his hands now, wary of dropping it. 

Rey hums and looks away. Kylo finds he wants her attention back. “Part of it was my Master. This is the path he set me on. The First Order is almost entirely his creation.” 

Rey sighs and turns back to him, frowning. “Why did you go to him in the first place?” 

Kylo holds her gaze. “Sometimes when you reach for greatness, it reaches back.” 

Rey’s eyebrows fly up. “Greatness? Is that the quality you would attribute to your former Master?”

Kylo does not correct her use of former. Snoke will be his Master until one or both of them are dead. “One of many. The others are ruthless, cunning, and patient. Do not make the mistake of underestimating him Rey.” 

That would be the death of them both, and Kylo finds that he wants Rey alive. 

***

Snoke is waiting for him in the launch bay, under the open sky. It’s jarring to see him outside of the main fortress, away from his stone and pageantry. Under the floodlights that fill the wide space, his Master appears even more like the creature Rey once accused Kylo of being, all grey skin and jagged points. 

Kylo steps out into the open carefully, though he shows nothing of the fear he feels in his face. Even under the mask he’s never been able to hide completely, not from him. Snoke watches him approach impassively and apparently alone. The wreckage of Kylo’s ship lies behind him, smoking and still spitting electric currents. It looks like a great slain beast, and Kylo understands the purpose of the deception. Snoke led Kylo blindly around the fortress to give him time to destroy his ship, thinking that it would cut him off at the knees. He still thinks that this is about Kylo making a power grab. He won’t live long enough to see that he has made a mistake. 

“Hello Apprentice,” Snoke says quietly, so that Kylo must strain to hear it. 

Kylo continues walking, every step putting him in more and more danger. “Master. I have been searching for you.” 

Snoke tilts his head. “I was aware.” 

“Then why not reveal yourself? Are you afraid to face your apprentice?” 

Snoke’s eyes narrow just slightly and Kylo feels his heart jump in his chest. He pushes it back down, knowing that he has to be deliberate, that he must use the dark side against him in a masterful way to draw his Master out. Kylo’s hands shake, and he wants to give in to the rage, to tap into the raw power, but he knows that is what Snoke will expect. If he needs to tap into a little light to beat this darkness, then so be it. He can show restraint. 

Kylo needs to be better, to be the best he can possibly be, for once in his life. 

“You think me afraid?” 

“I think you should be,” Kylo says, all pretenses dropped now. 

Snoke shakes his head slightly. “Foolish, as always.” 

Kylo smiles involuntarily, his lips curling in distaste and amusement. “You’re the fool. You sit in your fortress and guide your puppets, but you’re the one who misunderstood the most basic aspects of the Force.” 

Laughter, the kind Kylo had never heard before, drifts over to him. It’s a terrible sound. Kylo wants to wince, but he stops himself. Snoke drifts closer, seeming to move without actually walking. “You believe that you understand the mysteries of the Force? That you alone have the answer? All you have done is move backwards.” He shakes his head. “So indecisive. In my time, in the greatness of the Empire you would have been crushed as a child for your weak heart. You flee from the darkness because you can’t abide it. Do not think that you are special. Do not think that you understand.” 

“I understand more than you think,” Kylo responds, his voice more even than he himself had expected it to be. “I understand that you used me for years, pushing me towards some flawed goal you follow because you know no other way. My mistake was not trusting in you to guide me correctly, it was trusting in how you cared for yourself! You know nothing of the Force, and you never will, not really. It is beyond you now. You’re nothing but a lesser son of an already failed-” 

Snoke rushes forward, arm extended, but Kylo had been prepared, had been planning for this since the beginning. He gets his arm up faster, just enough to gain a foothold in his Master’s will. Kylo grunts when the full force of Snoke’s mind slams into his, but does not bend. He had the advantage in this strike, and he presses it, driving Snoke back a step. 

Even though he knew to expect her, it seems to Kylo that Rey appears suddenly. One moment it is only Kylo and his Master and the next she is emerging out of the shadow of the destroyed ship with a metal bladed and leather hilted _sword_ that Kylo dimly recognizes as one of the artifacts Snoke keeps in the trophy room. The sword is wickedly long and glinting in the artificial light. It is as silent as she is, and just as lethal. Kylo stares, his mind nearly blank with what he is seeing. He had almost forgotten that she was with him, so caught up in besting his Master. But she must have been watching, ready to strike. Noticing his apparent distraction, Snoke begins to turn around as well, but it’s too late. 

With a yell and a great swing Rey has cut off Snoke's arm before he even realizes that she’s there. Silences crashes in on them, but it’s quickly replaced with Snoke’s scream of rage. His arm is on the ground, twitching and grotesque. Kylo stares, disbelieving, and even Rey seems surprised with herself. Her eyes are wide and she has stopped moving, which Kylo realizes too late is a mistake. 

Snoke whips his remaining arm out towards her, his fingers splayed wide and Rey flies back, the sword slipping from her grasp. She hits the stark metal wall of the launch bay with a dull thud that no doubt rattles her bones and makes her cry out. Kylo waits for her to fall so he can catch her, help her if he can, but she stays there, pinned like an insect. 

“Excellent idea,” Snoke murmurs and Kylo jumps, reading Snoke’s intentions just seconds before he enacts them. 

Kylo rushes to exert his will on the blade at the same time that his Master does. The object flies forward but then jerks to a stop, shuddering as Snoke tries to push it into Rey’s chest and Kylo fights to keep it away from her. Kylo’s head pounds with the exertion of keeping it back, and his vision narrows in on his goal, but he can see Snoke’s twisted smile out of the corner of his eye. They grapple with each other’s will, both eager to outmatch, to overpower. But Snoke’s mind is clouded with pain, and his attention is divided between both Kylo and Rey. 

Straining for breath and strength, Kylo risks a glance to Rey, who is staring right back at him. As soon as their eyes meet, the connection between them snaps open again, pulling him in. Rey is much calmer than he is, though no less determined. She is also thinking a bit more clearly. 

_Fight smarter, not harder._

Kylo’s eyes widen and he abruptly shifts his efforts from pushing against Snoke’s will to weakening the sword itself. Horrible fear strikes him when it shoots forward several inches, but then it shatters, the pieces falling harmlessly to the ground. Snoke freezes, no doubt startled for the first time by Kylo’s actions, and Kylo capitalizes on it, drawing his saber and striking before Snoke can gather his thoughts. 

It’s not enough to defeat his instincts, but he does get in one solid hit to Snoke’s already injured side before his Master turns on him. Snoke beats him back with three powerful strokes, including one that makes contact with Kylo’s mask, shattering the viewplate. Kylo slides back on his heels, driven back by both mental and physical volleys as he rips the damaged thing off and throws it to the side. Without it, he feels exposed and vulnerable as he always does, but even more so now that Snoke can look straight into his eyes. Kylo fights the feeling away, raising his lightsaber once more. 

“I will deal with you later,” Snoke hisses at Rey without looking away from Kylo, his eyes as black as the night above them. There are so few stars in the forsaken piece of space Snoke had claimed for himself it seems like they are standing below a great abyss. Kylo had felt many times as though it might suck him into space, that the gravity would shift and he would fall upwards. Perhaps it still will. 

Kylo lunges forward, throwing himself at Snoke with everything he has. Snoke responds in kind, but Kylo finds this round to be simpler, easier. It seems that age had not weakened the Sith Lord, but inactivity had reduced his skill. 

“Too long in your palace Master?” Kylo taunts as he dodges Snoke’s swing. He’s fighting with his nondominant arm, since his preferred one is currently laying somewhere to their left, curled up and dead. “Or are you just too ancient? Too much a lie?” 

Snoke growls out a curse and takes yet another swing which Kylo dodges. Grinning, Kylo suddenly drops to the ground and sweeps his legs around in a tight circle, knocking Snoke down. It’s a cheap trick, a shot in the dark, but it’s nothing that Snoke taught him. As soon as Kylo sees the slight widening of Snoke's eyes as he falls, Kylo strikes with his saber again, this time landing his blow to Snoke’s unprotected shoulder. 

It doesn’t kill him, but it does achieve Kylo’s goal, which was to break his concentration enough to allow Rey to break free. She drops lightly to the ground, barely making any noise until she draws her saber. It hums along with the other two in the space, drawing Snoke’s attention. 

“Little girl, what did I say?” Snoke taunts, turning his back on Kylo to advance on her. Adrenaline pounding through his veins, Kylo jumps at him, but Snoke whips around and knocks him back. He continues to stalk towards her, mind no doubt clouded by rage and thunder. Kylo comes at him again when he sees Rey tense to move, and they strike together. 

With their minds connected they are ruthless, but still not quite enough. The anger only makes Snoke stronger, more deadly. Though Kylo can see how the loss of his arm has weakened him, it still won’t be enough unless they can manage miracles this night. Snoke coils to strike, leaving his left flank unprotected for a split second. 

Rey and Kylo see it at the same time, but only Kylo is familiar enough to know that it’s a false opening, intended to get him to drop his defense of Rey so Snoke can get her. But by the time his mind catches up to his instincts, it’s already too late. He’s already moving, striving to make the critical hit, but so is their enemy. Snoke lines himself up to drive his saber straight through Rey’s chest, and Kylo can’t change course. He can’t do anything but keep going.

Kylo has always had a sense for balance, for give and take. There is an intrinsic balance to the Force, Rey isn’t wrong about that. But it isn’t the flowing water, it’s the riptide. For flowers to grow there must be rain. For life to come there must be pain. For Darth Vader to rise, Padme Amidala had to die. He has heard all the stories. Sacrifice and gain are the two constants, the cycle of the universe, and Kylo knows how to make sacrifices. 

He moves, puts himself in Snoke’s way, and Rey screams. Then there is a flash of pain, like a bolt of lightning. Kylo blinks, surprised at suddenly finding himself on his back on the spinning ground, his arms and legs splayed outward for balance. Everything is shifting even as he can hear Rey and Snoke continue to struggle against one another, Rey punctuating every strike with a yell. All the while Kylo struggles with himself, trying to sit up, but ultimately finds that he can’t. The blackness bears down on him, coming down from the starless sky. He takes in a shaky breath, trying to stay awake. The sounds of the fight get farther away. 

There’s a strange tingling in his fingers, and more in his legs. The ground is shifting beneath his back but he realizes that it’s not that at all, it’s him. He blinks, confused and dizzy, probably from the moving. His first thought is that it’s finally happening. He’s finally getting sucked up into the abyss. His second thought is of blood loss and what it does to a man’s mind, what it might do to his use of the Force. 

There is a loud crashing sound, followed by a tight scream, bitten off at the end. Kylo lets out a sharp breath, gasping. His third thought is of Rey. 

Kylo gasps and turns his head out of great effort in time to see her land a devastating blow to Snoke’s face. The image blurs and comes back into focus, and now Snoke is on his knees, arm extended outwards towards her. Blood is dripping freely from both of them. Rey holds two sabers in her hands, one red and one blue, but they are frozen in midair, humming and spitting in turn. Kylo shakes, struggling to get up, to fight, but he can’t. Enraged, he pounds his hand against the ground, realizing with a jolt that he can move his arm. 

He forces his arm up, fingers stretched out in their direction, and presses against his Master’s mind. 

**Snoke.**

Kylo projects his will with every fiber of his being, drawing on any power, Light side and Dark to aid him. **Snoke. You lose.**

The set of Snoke’s jaw becomes harder, but still he does not let Kylo in. Kylo’s arm starts to shake in earnest and something drips onto his lips, getting in his mouth. Blood. It has to be soon. 

Kylo applies to Force to Snoke’s hand, to the raw place where his arm used to be, to his knee. Snoke twitches but doesn’t move. Kylo presses harder, as hard as he can, both physically and mentally. **Look at her. Look at me. I am lost to you and she will never be yours. Even if you kill us you will still have lost.**

All at once he feels something give way, a barrier Kylo had never been able to breach falling. He slips into Snoke’s mind and grapples with it, wrestling with the darkness, with doubt and anger. Snoke’s consciousness seems to shrink back, but then a jagged piece of metal comes shooting through the air and straight through Kylo’s arm on Snoke’s command. Kylo yells, the pain and rage doubling up on him and tried to roll over, but even that he can’t do. Snoke’s mind collides with his like a tidal wave. 

You are the failure Apprentice. You are nothing. 

As abruptly as Snoke had appeared, he is suddenly gone, and Kylo is alone in his head once again. He gasps, feeling the full extent of his injuries once again and dimly aware of the sounds around him. The unforgettable shrieking noise of force lightning fills the air and Snoke is screaming in triumph, screaming so loudly that Kylo can’t stand it. He can’t hear Rey anymore. He squeezes his eyes shut, willing it all out. He’s numb now, uncaring of the world outside his head. Outside is failure and the promise of torture. Outside is nothing. 

“Kylo?” 

Rey. 

His eyes flutter open and again and he sees Rey right as she drops to her knees by his side, pressing her hands to his neck. He can barely feel them. He can barely understand what is going on. 

“You- how?”

Rey shakes her head, looking as though she is blinking back tears. Kylo wants to raises his arm to touch her face but he can’t. Rey’s face is stark white. 

“I had to do it. You distracted him and it gave me time to-” she cuts herself off, still shaking her head. Her hands are shaking too. “It doesn’t matter, we have to get you help.” 

Kylo wants to laugh, but it’s too much effort to even think about. “Help?” 

Her hand goes to his cheek, trailing down the first scar she had given him. He turns his face into her palm, catching sight of Snoke’s smoking and crumpled body for the first time. She really had done it. 

“We did it,” Rey insists, giving him a little shake. “Come on I want you awake, stay here. Stay with me now.” 

He wants to, because it’s what she wants, but the edges of his vision are going dark and he knows how much easier it would be to let go. Kylo tips his head down, trying to keep his eyes on her face even when she’s busy categorizing his other injuries. 

“I can’t,” Kylo finally manages. 

Rey squeezes him so tightly she’s sure to leave bruises on his already too damaged body. Her gaze jerks back up to is face, and he’s grateful. Rey is furious. “No, you don’t get to go. You don’t leave me here to do this.”

He stares up at her, feeling very calm. His eyes are glassy, unfocused. It’s very difficult to see her, but at least he can still speak. “I’m sorry.”

He is freezing cold, just like he was on Starkiller Base the night Rey defeated him for the first time. The night she woke him up. All of the heat is leaking out of his bones and he can feel the snow, the stone, beneath him. His eyes slip shut. 

“No.” She gives him another little shake and he gasps, eyes opening again. It seems he does what Rey tells him to do, even when he can’t do anything at all. Rey continues to talk to him, so he keeps trying to listen. “Stay awake. Stay alive. Help is coming Kylo, I promise you.”

“You lowered the shields?” Kylo struggles to ask. Everything is a struggle. He can barely stand to have his eyes open now. 

She smiles, though it’s clearly only for his benefit and not the least bit convincing. She looks like she’s about to cry. “Yes, of course I did.” 

“Of course.” Kylo smiles back at her as best he can. He wants to curl his fingers around her wrist, but he can’t move. He can’t do anything but fade. “You’re going to change so much.” 

“Yes, we will,” Rey says, still stubborn. She’s running her hands along his side, along his arm. “You’re a part of this now, we need you, I need you.”

She moves to his legs, and he can’t see her anymore, can’t see anything but blackness. His ears are ringing, and the pain is returning. That seems cruel, but most of life had been that way, why should his death be any different? 

“Rey,” Kylo breathes, wanting this to be the last thing he says. “Thank you.” 

He knows she answers him, but he can’t hear her. He can’t feel her hands. Can’t see her face anymore. Everything is black. Kylo lets himself go with the final comforting thought that Rey can do the same. She can do anything.


	6. One Billion Lives

When Kylo wakes up in the hospital he looks so startled that Rey cracks a smile for the first time in days. 

“Hi,” she calls out softly, but he doesn’t seem to hear her, too busy staring down at himself and then glancing frantically around the room, eye wide and breathing elevated. Rey looks around. It’s clearly a hospital room, both cluttered with medical gear and starkly undecorated, but he seems significantly more confused by it than he should be. 

Back at the temple, Rey had put her hands on his chest and willed the life back into him while Snoke’s body lay there, mere feet away from them. She pushed hard enough to leave more bruises and made him hold on until help arrived. Even as ships were descending and landing all around her, Rey had kept her focus on Kylo. He nearly slipped away, but didn’t. Looking at him now, she can see that he hadn’t known that. 

Finally his eyes make it back to her, and he stares, silent and hopefully calming down. He doesn’t try to sit up. Rey shifts in her seat, the same one she had occupied for days, and continues as though the pause hadn’t occurred. 

“We’re in the state hospital on Coruscant. You’re going to make it, but it was touch and go for a few days there.” She nods at him. “It’ll be a while before you’re back on your feet, but they say you should recover enough to fight again. You have a couple new artificial organs, but they saved your leg and your arm. Sorry I ruined your heroic suicide, by the way.”

Kylo makes a face, averting his gaze. “That wasn’t...I didn’t intend for that to happen.”

Looking into his eyes, and having been inside his mind, Rey isn’t so sure about that. But she wants to believe him, and maybe that’s what he needs from her now. She nods. “Good. We’re not done here.”

He closes his eyes, but she can see the shadow of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. “Really? What now?”

“We have to unite the Force and help put the universe back together.”

One of his eyes cracks open. “Is that all?”

She can’t help but smile, even though she kind of feels like screaming. “Yes.” 

He nods, very slightly. 

Rey searches his face. “Do you want to be alone?”

“No, never,” Kylo says right away, and then freezes.

Rey slides her hand across the blankets until she finds his, grasping it tightly. “Good. Neither do I.” 

Kylo inhales and exhales twice, very slowly. Then he turns to face her again. “What about you?”

Rey blinks, caught off guard by the sudden subject change. “What?”

“How badly were you hurt?” 

“Oh.” She glances away, and then looks back. Of all the things they had shared, this is maybe the least invasive. She raises her free hand and gestures to her body. Even now it feels strange.

“Nerve damage, mostly on the left side.” 

Kylo frowns. “From force lightning? But you-” He breaks off, obviously searching through his memories. “You were never directly hit. You were damaged from feeling it through me?” 

Rey hesitates, and clenches her hand into a tight fist, hoping that he doesn’t see it shaking. “No I- it was me.” 

His eyebrows shoot up. “You?” 

“Yes.” Rey straightens her shoulders, though it’s hard. She had decided that she would not hide from this, and certainly not from the only other person who had been there. Who had lived it with her. “Apparently when you use the technique without training it can be...volatile.” 

Kylo frowns again, and it would be clear to her even if she didn’t have experience within his mind that he’s running through a myriad of responses, but what he finally settles on is, “I don’t know what to think about that.” 

“Neither do I.” 

“I suppose I should be impressed.” 

“I’m horrified,” Rey whispers back. Honesty had always worked out between them in the past. “I didn’t- well I suppose it doesn’t matter what I intended, but I didn’t realize what I was going to do until it was already happening. Until I was doing it, I mean. I don’t know if that makes it worse or better.” 

“You likely tapped into my abilities, like you did the first time we fought,” Kylo says and starts to sit up, getting one elbow up and then the other. Rey leans forward, ready to try to help him if he needs it, but he doesn’t. The pain is clear around his eyes. Rey knows the feeling. 

“That’s what Master Luke said, but I think he might just be in denial,” Rey says quietly, trying not to think about it too much. She hadn’t seen him in days, not since he first came to visit her, but she can feel him through the Force, how conflicted, guilty, and sad he is. 

Kylo’s mouth twitches, the expression catching a bit on his scar. Rey had noticed the same thing happening with his bisected eyebrow. He shrugs. “He probably is, but not about that. Force lightning isn’t something you could have easily developed yourself. There are some Dark techniques you could certainly master on your own, but this isn’t likely to be one of them. The fact that he once did it himself is probably what’s haunting him the most.” 

Rey nods and looks away, mind wandering back to the battle. She pulls through the memories of what happened, her heart rate starting to pick up from just the remembering, and leaves the connection open for Kylo to see if he wants to. He does, showing Rey what little he was able to pick up on at the end, when he was both lying on the ground and on the verge of passing out from pain and blood loss. Rey smiles and Kylo smirks back. 

“Sorry,” Rey says, trying to keep a straight face. 

“It can be a little funny now that I’m not actively dying,” he says, clearly trying to diffuse the tension and calm her. To help her focus as he so often does. 

She rolls her eyes and focuses herself, calling up the moment she tapped into the force lighting. Kylo had already been struck down, had already put himself between Rey and the saber, and she was enraged. Snoke swung at her again, and she picked up Kylo’s saber as well and struck back, again and again. They struggle and harm each other and eventually Rey earns a direct hit to his face, driving him to his knees. But he bests her mentally where she bested him physically, and she suddenly can’t move. 

Fear grips her entire being, bleeding out into reality a bit. Her hands shake, even where she’s still holding Kylo’s on the medical bed, but she controls her breathing and continues, dragging them both through the abridged version of their shared horror in hyper relief. 

Snoke frozen. The metal shard from the broken sword slamming through Kylo’s hand. Rey’s rage, finally crystallizing and breaking through. Freed, she drops both sabers and stretches one arm out on instinct. Seconds later Snoke is dead, reduced to a twitching corpse with a smoking hole burned through his chest, ash forming at the edges. Rey stares, as confused as Snoke seemed to be when he was first hit, before he started screaming. It’s quiet now. Rey drops her arm, eyes wide and heart pounding. She can’t move. Then she remembers Kylo, dying on the ground, and she runs. 

Kylo breathes in deeply as he withdraws, leaning back against the headboard, his eyes far away. Rey pulls her hand back so she can twist it with the other in her lap. She wants to get up and go do something, anything, but she makes herself stay still. Over the past few days she had done enough meditating, forms, and as many of her exercises as she could physically accomplish to last her a lifetime, and none of it helped. 

Finally, Kylo nods. “You did tap into my abilities, likely because all three of our minds were connected in that moment. Still, it is impressive.” 

Rey shivers. “Before I left I told my Master that that the last thing I wanted to do was to fall into Darkness myself by trying to make things right in a naive way.” 

Kylo’s eyes swivel over to hers. “And now?” 

“I’ve been trying to regret it,” Rey says quietly, as though afraid of being overheard, even though she has already told the only two people that matter. “I want to feel bad. I want to- but I don’t. I can’t.” 

“You shouldn’t. There are no wrong tools, only wrong action.” 

“Wrong action,” Rey says, and her hand moves to grip the place where Li had bitten her. She hadn’t been able to find out yet if he had survived. “I’m not sure I know what it means anymore. I don’t feel like I _did_ anything wrong. We set out to kill him, I knew that.” 

Rey shakes her head. “I wanted to live. I wanted us both to live. But that?” 

“Would you have felt this badly if you had managed to kill him with the sword you found in the artifact room? Or your saber?” Kylo leans forward, reaching over to take her hand again. He squeezes so hard that Rey winces. “You’re right to want to live.” 

“By any means necessary?” Rey shoots back, although her heart isn’t in it. She wonders what she wouldn’t have done, what tool she wouldn’t have used, to save them. Kylo seems to understand. 

“If it is truly necessary, then yes.” 

“The ends don’t always justify the means.” 

“Perhaps not, but in this case, they do.” He shakes his head. “But you already know that. You’re not really upset about your behavior, you’re upset because you feel as though you broke a promise to your Master.” 

“I did.” 

Kylo shrugs. “If he’s smart, he’ll forgive you. Only a fool would fault his student for saving her own life. If he cares more about his rules than he does about you, he’s not worth caring about.” 

Rey bites her lip and looks away, trying to work through her feelings one by one. To be logical, just liked she learned from Luke. It’s difficult, especially since she’s in pain and residually terrified that Kylo isn’t going to wake up even though he’s obviously fine now. He’s still holding onto her hand. 

Rey takes a deep breath. “It’s all going to change.” 

“Yes.” 

“I can’t be a Jedi anymore. It’s over.” 

“It’s been over for years. The Jedi will cease to exist.” 

“Maybe.” She tilts her head to the side. “I don’t know if Luke can do it again. The Kenobi line of Jedi certainly ends with me. It’s funny, you know, because I planned for this. This is what I want, and I know that. But it’s still a surprise somehow.” 

“Like everything you ever worked for is gone,” Kylo says, much more quietly. 

Rey looks back and sees him looking back at her, tension evident in every line of his face, in how tightly he’s holding her hand. Her heart clenches, twisted with the desire to comfort and be comforted at the same time, so she stands and uses his hand to pull herself onto the bed. Kylo leans back, apparently surprised, but allows her to settle in next to him in the narrow space, her head on his shoulder. 

“We’ll be ok,” she says, and he relaxes against her. 

“It certainly seems possible.” 

***

The trial of Kylo Ren begins without fanfare on his fifth day awake in the hospital. A visibly nervous attendant about Rey’s age comes to collect them at noon, his gaze shifting between them as though he didn’t know who needed to be watched more. Rey smiles at him pleasantly and resolves to ignore it. They have more important things to worry about today. 

Kylo scowls at the wheelchair they bring him, the damage to his body still too extensive to risk trying to walk, but ultimately acquiesces. They don’t bother to change, mostly because the event is taking place in the hospital administrator conference room on the third floor. The Republic officials in attendance certainly don’t seem to care that Rey is wearing hospital issue pants that need to be rolled up at the ankles. It’s a sham, and they all know it. Kylo’s previous arrangement with Rey notwithstanding, they need him, and they all know that as well. Justice is blind, and it is apparently an opportunist as well.

As they sit, Rey steadies herself on Kylo’s shoulder, her muscles still feeling as though they’d been drawn and quartered from the strain and damage. She does it without thinking, and likely would never have even remembered that she did it if it weren’t for the way the others all zeroed in on her, expressions ranging from suspicion to speculation. Rey retracts her hand slowly, feeling strangely like she had done something wrong. Next to her, Kylo huffs and leans over to whisper in her ear, putting himself in her space again.

“Ignore them,” he says, and leans back, apparently satisfied with himself. 

Rey shoots him a disapproving look, but doesn’t respond. She had long learned that there is no point in trying to get Kylo to not act like a child when that’s what he wants to do. Around other people, he's almost petty. He might accuse her of sensitivity, but she’s not the one putting on a show. 

A stern faced man in a military uniform stands. “These proceedings will now begin,” he says, sounding bored, and sits again. Rey continues to stare at him politely, while Kylo simply sits, expressionless and silent. Even the bond reveals nothing. 

An attendant stands and reads a list of charges to the room, starting from minor crimes and working up to major ones. Rey doesn’t flinch at any of them. She had seen many of the acts described second hand, through Kylo’s memories. It’s only when they reach ‘patricide’ and ‘mass genocide’ that she looks down. 

Kylo, who had been staring off into space, abruptly refocuses. “I did not destroy the Hosnian system. That crime should be struck from the list.” 

The man’s face twitches. “You were not present on Starkiller base when the weapon was activated?”

“I was present but I did not activate it. I have- had no control over military decisions, and I made it clear to General Hux and the Supreme Leader that I disagreed with the strategy.”

“And why was that?” 

Kylo blinks. He clearly hadn’t been expecting the question. “The strategy was unsound.”

The attendant’s eyebrows slowly creep upwards. “In what way?”

Kylo fixes him with a stern look, and he freezes. “Destruction of that scale is efficient for destroying infrastructure and weapons but as a method of demonstration and control it is counterproductive.” 

“Counterproductive,” the man repeats, casting a glance at his companions, who do not respond. 

“Yes. Not to mention it is a waste of life. It creates more rebels than it destroys. At the time I felt our efforts were better served trying to recapture Rey Kenobi and find Luke Skywalker instead of making more enemies, so I argued against it. That crime should be struck from the line of questioning.” 

“Can anyone corroborate this?”

“General Hux, but he will not.” 

“Very well. We will strike it regardless.” He nods to an attendant, who types something into a data pad. “Do you deny these remaining actions?”

Kylo shrugs, actually shrugs, and Rey closes her eyes. “No, I do not deny them. To do so would be ridiculous. I acted within the context of an ongoing war, and under orders.”

“So you regret these actions?”

He meets the man’s gaze evenly. “I did not say that. What I did was done in a time of war. The same rules do not apply.” 

“The execution and torture of prisoners is not allowed under any circumstances.”

“Not under Republic law, but the First Order does not operate under those same laws.” 

“That is not-” 

Kylo continues as though he hadn’t spoken, looking bored. “Furthermore the Republic frequently executes its prisoners, or at least kills them before they have been taken prisoner. For example, the late Supreme Leader Snoke of the First Order.” 

Silence descends upon the room. Rey watches the judges share pointed looks, avoiding both Kylo’s gaze and hers. She reaches down through their bond, and finds him calm, like a still pool. 

_You could make this easy, you know._

**It’s already easy.**

_Don’t push your luck._

In the end, it doesn’t matter. Ben Solo, alias Kylo Ren, is found not guilty of war crimes due to the fact that he was forcibly conditioned to serve the First Order, and groomed from a young age by a much more powerful Force user. Kylo frowns as the verdict is being read, and looks ready to say something else, but Rey grabs his knee under the table. He glances at her out of the corner of his eye, but stay silent. 

Rey relaxes. Despite the fact that she knew all along that they would still be free to do the work they need to do, she had been nervous. Kylo seems more at ease as well, though he is found guilty of treason and sentenced to serve the Republic in some capacity for the rest of his natural life. This seems rather made up to Rey, a method of control more than anything else, but she lets it go. Thankfully so does Kylo. After the final verdicts are rendered and Kylo signs the necessary documents, it’s over. 

“Well that wasn’t so bad,” Rey says, after everyone else had left. 

Kylo nods, raising one hand to curl under his chin, apparently lost in thought. Rey glances away, and then looks back. “Do you want to go back to the room?” 

He doesn’t respond. Rey reaches for his shoulder, gripping tightly in the hope that it will ground him. She knows that it’s difficult for him to reconcile the things he had done in the name of his Master, in the name of his ideals. A necessary evil, he had called it, like flushing a wound. Or denying his victims justice so he can help Rey restore balance to the Force. 

She leans down. “Kylo? Do you-” 

“My mother is here,” he says abruptly, still not looking her in the eye. 

Rey blinks. “Oh.” Leia hadn’t been a judge, of course, but Rey hadn’t know that she was coming at all. In a more legitimate proceeding she probably would have been called to give evidence, but in this case they let it go. Rey hadn’t expected her to come anyway, and apparently neither had Kylo. 

“Yes.” Kylo lowers his hand back down to the armrest of his chair. “Oh.” 

“I didn’t realize.” 

He nods, still staring at the wall. “That’s logical. Your connection to her force signature is naturally weaker due to the lack of a familial relationship. In fact-” 

“Kylo,” Rey interrupts him, and he lets her, falling silent again. After a long moment, he nods again.

“She’s in the hallway. Let’s go.” 

“Ok,” Rey says, a little nervously, following behind Kylo as he wheels himself out of the room. She doesn’t offer to push the chair, knowing that it’s the last thing he wants right now and that she would probably feel the same. Still. She wishes she has something to do with her hands as they round the corner and see Leia waiting for them, grim faced and looking frighteningly like her son. 

“Mother,” Kylo manages, glaring up at her from his wheelchair. It should have been funny, seeing such a tall and usually imposing man have to crane his neck to look at his own mother, but it isn’t. Especially not when Rey realizes that really, this is how he’s used to seeing her. He hadn’t seen her since he was a child. 

Leia doesn’t blink. “Ben.” 

His jaw clenches so hard that Rey can hear it. She winces, ready to step forward distract everyone, but he rallies. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do the polite thing and die on Snoke’s base. I’m sure that would have been significantly more convenient for you.” 

Rey feels her eyes widen. It’s not a line of discussion she wants any of them going down, especially since she heard two of the Republic judges saying the exact same thing earlier. Leia just shakes her head. 

“Don’t do that. We should talk.” 

“We’re talking right now.” 

“Ben,” Leia says, clearly exasperated. “Let’s not do this.” 

Rey glances down and see Kylo press his lips together in a hard line. It's the first warning sign of a volcanic eruption, reminding her of how she would know to steer clear of a topic when she was hiding in his closet for the sake of the mission. She looks back up, smiling at Leia. “We’ve had a really long day, I think that-” 

Leia fixes her with a stern look. “We’ve all had a long day, Rey. I appreciate the effort, but I don’t need you to manage this.” 

Repressing a flinch, Rey nods. “I’m sorry, but we really should go. We’re not meant to be up and about yet. Doctor’s orders.” 

“Very well,” Leia says, and Rey doesn’t like the coolness in her voice. She used to be so warm with her. Leia refocuses on her son, who isn’t looking at her anymore. “Let me know when you’re ready to talk, and I’ll make time for you.” 

He doesn’t respond, but Leia clearly hadn’t been expecting him to. She turns and walks away, giving Rey one last regretful glance over her shoulder. Rey smiles back slightly, trying to project acceptance, forgiveness, understanding. It’s exhausting. Things were so much easier before, back when it was all Light and Dark. When she turns the corner, Rey looks back down at Kylo, who hasn’t moved. 

“Well. So much for that relationship,” Rey says, trying to be funny for him like he'd been for her back in their room. Even though in her heart she finds that she’s hopeful that the General will come around, and that she can’t blame her if she doesn’t. 

Kylo looks up at her, still serious. “You’re better off without her, trust me.” 

“I’m not so sure about that.” 

“I am,” Kylo says as Rey takes hold of the handles of his wheelchair to take them back to their room. Kylo doesn’t object, apparently too lost in thought to care if anyone sees them. Anyone who can identify Kylo without his mask is either gone or a nurse. “She’s not evil, but she’s not particularly loyal either. She abandons people. It’s best you know that now, instead of learning it the hard way later.” 

Rey nods, unsure of how to respond to that. “In any case, none of that was as bad as it could have been.” 

Kylo turns his head to smirk at her. “Always the optimist.” 

“We have no reason not to be optimistic, not at this point,” Rey points out, and it’s true. Even as they walk back to their room the First Order is being dismantled, repurposed into something else. She expects they’ll receive word that Hux has been captured any day now, and then the rest will follow. 

“Maybe,” Kylo says, turning back around. Then he turns to face her again. “Where are your friends now? I would have thought they would visit you.”

She blinks, surprised at the question. Then she smirks. “You mean you were dreading it?”

He rolls his eyes and faces front as they reach their room. Rey lets go of the chair, letting a droid lift Kylo back into bed. She sits down in her usual chair, muscles relaxing as the pressure on her strained joins relents. 

Rey sighs in relief. “Let me see, Finn is off being famous. I think they have him touring the Rydux system now, promoting the Republic and telling his story. Poe is doing recon work, I think. BB8 is probably with Poe.”

Kylo looks at her, visibly amused. “You just referred to a droid as you friend.” 

She gives him a dry look. “At least I have friends.”

“Traitors and weak minded soldiers.”

She doesn’t point out that he’s officially a traitor too now. No doubt he would just say that he’s no traitor, he’s a revolutionary. Which, she supposes, is true. They all are now. Rey shakes her head and looks away, smiling slightly. 

“What’s wrong?” Kylo asks abruptly, making her turn back. 

She turns back. “What? Nothing.” 

He raises an eyebrow at her. “What’s wrong.” 

Rey blinks at him. “I’m not sure what you mean.” 

“You looked sad. You felt sad.” 

Rey frowns, but doesn’t tell him he was incorrect. She thinks back, trying to identify what he had seen. “I guess I- I haven’t heard from Finn in ages,” she says without thinking, and then shakes her head. “Which is fine, he’s busy. _I’m_ busy.” 

“When was the last time he contacted you?” 

“Not since I contacted you, I guess.” 

“Ah,” Kylo says, looking away. 

Now that Rey has started talking, it’s like she can’t stop. “I know I’m probably being ridiculous, I make my own choices. I want to make my own choices. I accepted the possibility of losing everything when I started this, even my life, so it shouldn’t be that hard to possibly be losing my first friend.” 

“But it is,” Kylo says, quietly. 

Rey nods. “I don’t- do you know what I mean?” 

Kylo shrugs. “Not particularly.” 

“Because you took them with you when you left.” 

“The Knights? I suppose, but I wouldn’t particularly call them my friends.” 

Rey tilts her head, watching him watch her out of the corner of his eye. “Well, we have each other now.” 

He glances over at her, his dark eyes a little wider than normal. “Yes. I suppose we do.” 

***

As it turns out, living is harder than dying and leading is harder than fighting. 

Rey is pretty sure that she knew this before, but knowing something intellectually and actually experiencing it are two very different things. Already she has been faced with several complicated decisions about her new path, brought to her by droids and various public officials, and they haven’t even left the hospital. Is she willing to accept provisional state guardianship of Ben Solo under the parameters of his sentence? If he relapses or commits further crimes, will she bring him into custody? Will she speak on behalf of one group or another based on some political distinction she barely understands? When will she be ready for a public appearance? 

It’s overwhelming to say the least, but at least it’s her dealing with it and not Kylo. Rey isn’t sure how he would respond, and she would rather be in charge of handling it than sidelined and watching. Besides, she knows that once they leave and head for deep space again to begin the reunification, he’ll be forced to take a more central position. For now, it’s best that they have time to heal, and they both need a lot of healing. 

Rey has screaming nightmares that leave her sitting stock straight up in bed, heart pounding and gasping uncontrollably. Kylo has ones that paralyze him, hold him still and quiet but nearly hyperventilating. Sometimes they sleep in the same bed, back to back, to keep them at bay. When one of them starts to shake, the other can turns around and stop it, slip into their mind and drive it away. 

She never left his room. It simply never occurred to her. They go from never seeing each other to suddenly living together again. It’s less of an adjustment than Rey would have thought, which scares her. Between hiding out in his rooms and taking down a madman together, it has somehow become easier being with Kylo than being without him. She wonders sometimes how Kylo feels about, but never asks. She’s pretty sure she knows. 

There’s a knock on their door, and Rey looks up from her meditative pose, oddly startled. They don't receive many visitors and they’re not due for another check up in hours. She glances at Kylo, who is on the other side of the room doing his stretches. Ever since he was cleared to stop using the wheelchair he’d worked hard at his physical therapy. When he shrugs, she turns back. 

“Come in,” Rey calls out, breaking their comfortable silence with some regret. 

The regret grows even greater when she sees the look on Kylo face when it’s Luke who opens the door. Rey jumps to her feet. “Master Luke. It’s good to see you again.” 

He smiles at her, casting a short look in Kylo’s direction when he doesn’t acknowledge him. “Rey. I was hoping to speak with you.”

“Of course,” she says, pulling the other chair in the room over to where hers is and gesturing for him to sit. Kylo has stopped moving entirely, but Rey ignores him. He can decide to stay or go, but Rey won’t make the choice for him. Luke, however, has no issue forcing him into a decision. 

“You’re welcome to join us, Ben.” 

Kylo gives him a flat look, his dark eyes narrowing into slits. “No, thank you,” he grinds out, and then walks out of the room in nothing but his training pants. 

Luke watches him leave. “I see his manners haven’t changed.” 

“It’s been an adjustment,” Rey responds mildly. “What did you want to talk to me about?” 

Luke refocuses on her. “It truth I’m glad he chose not to stay. This should be heard by you alone first.” 

Rey frowns. “I...appreciate that, but anything you can say in front of me concerning-” 

“It’s about your parents,” Luke says quickly, his expression so neutral it can only be forced. Rey feels herself freeze. Ever since Luke had discovered her ancestry, she had wondered about her parents. But Luke told her that the information he uncovered ended with her grandfather, Obi wan Kenobi, who Rey regards as little more than a fairytale. The idea of a more tangible link to her family, to her parents, is unexpected. 

“What about them?” Rey asks, feeling the telltale tightening in her throat. She tries to push it down, but it can’t be helped. 

Luke smiles sadly, clearly trying to put her at ease. “It appears that they are dead. I’m sorry.” 

Rey bites her lip and nods, looking away. Luke continues, his gentle voice doing nothing to soothe her nerves. “I didn’t want to tell you until I was sure.”

Rey nods again. “It’s alright. I knew, at some level of course I knew that they were gone.”

“I’m sorry for your loss. Do you want to know what I learned about them? It’s not much, but-”

“Yes, please,” Rey manages, rubbing at her eyes with the backs of her palms, trying and trying not to cry. Sadness is a slippery slope that can lead to fear, anger, hate. The Jedi aren’t supposed to feel such things, Rey knows. But then she remembers that she isn’t a Jedi anymore. A familiar cold feeling slides over her mind, and she stills. Finds Luke watching her. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice sounding small and far away from herself. 

“It’s alright,” Luke says slowly. “Are you alright?”

She takes a deep breath. “Yes. What about my parents?”

Luke waits for her to meet his eyes again before continuing. “As you know, I’ve been looking into your past, and the past of my former teacher, your grandfather Obi wan Kenobi. He was in exile for a number of years, and as far as I can tell, somewhere within that time frame he met a woman and had a child with her. The woman did not survive, but the child did. Your mother.”

Rey is hardly breathing, and her hands clench and unclench at the fabric of her pants. “What was her name?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know.”

Rey nods. “What happened?” 

Luke sighs, his eyes going very far away. “Your grandfather had many enemies, ones that looked for him even while he was in hiding. Eventually one, a former Sith apprentice called Darth Maul that he had previously defeated, and who blamed him for his fall from power, found him and his family. Your mother, at that point a mother herself, ran and took you and your father with her. Ben- that is, Obi wan, stayed to fight.”

Rey nods, trying to picture it, to picture them. She can see the ambush, the fighting. Her mother’s face remains cloudy. Every time she tries to focus on it, to back track from her own features and form an original, she fails. 

“From there, the story is less clear, and I haven’t been able to contact Obi wan’s spirit for years to confirm it. But from what I can piece together, Darth Maul sent others to find the three of you while he hunted your grandfather. Your mother hid you on Jakku and laid a false trail, tricking the servants of Darth Maul into thinking that she and your father still had you with them.” 

Rey can’t help but smile, even though she knows how the story must end. “She tricked them?” 

Luke smiles back very slightly. “I assume so. Otherwise they would have continued to look for you, and likely would have found you long ago. The Kenobi clan has always been skilled in mind tricks. It’s why you were able to pick it up so readily.”

“That and the fact that I learned it from Kylo,” Rey says without thinking. Then she looks up and into Luke's eyes, apologetic.

Luke hesitates. “Of course. In any case, your parents did not succeed in evading Darth Maul’s assassins. When Obi wan finally defeated Darth Maul once and for all, it was too late, and it seems that he believed you died with them.”

Rey nods. “So I wasn’t abandoned,” she says, and then catches Luke’s eye. “I’m sorry, I know that’s a selfish point to take from that story but-”

Luke shakes his head. “You have every right to fixate on it. I know how much it ate away at you, the not knowing. I hope this brings you some measure of peace.”

“It does,” Rey says, even though she’s not so sure that it’s peace she’s feeling. “Thank you.”

Luke nods at her. “I’m not surprised that he never told me this, but I wish he had.” 

Rey smiles. “Would you have come and found me?” 

“Of course,” he says, but then his smiles fades. “And Ben would have taken you when he fell.” 

It takes her a moment to realize that he means Ben Solo, not Ben Kenobi.

“Maybe,” she says, thinking about it. “Maybe I would be a Knight of Ren now, if that had happened.” 

Luke shakes his head, looking tired. “I wish I could say that I can’t imagine that, but I can. Easily.” 

Rey looks away, trying to imagine it for herself. Luke is right, it isn’t difficult. Given the way she grew up, given the way Kylo described the Jedi academy and what happened when he let the First Order in, she can see it. She isn’t so naive to think anymore that she would never practice the Dark side. Her fingers twitch with the memory of electricity, of rendering Snoke down to ashes. If she had been taken as a child? Trained from that point among others in the Dark? Rey nods. 

“I’m glad it happened this way instead,” Luke says, reaching out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “I’m glad I never had the opportunity to fail you, the grandchild of the man who never failed me.” 

Rey looks up, refocusing on him. “Never?” 

Luke opens his mouth, and then closes it. He never answers her question. 

***

Kylo comes back several hours later. Rey hears him open and close the door, senses that it’s him and not a threat, so she doesn’t turn around. She’s sitting in her chair by the window, arms hugging her legs to her chest and watching the city sky. It’s still a novelty sometimes, being somewhere other than Jakku, and Coruscant is fascinating, mesmerizing. Most of the time she doesn’t even think about it anymore, but ever so often-

“Rey?” 

She doesn’t turn. “Yes?” 

There is a long pause. Rey can hear herself breathing. Her hands shake on her knees, so she grips them tighter. 

Kylo walks over, stopping directly in front of her, so Rey looks up. He’s staring down at her, frowning. Apparently at some point he found clothes to wear so he’s no longer bare-chested and without shoes. Rey smiles up at him. “Sorry, I was distracted.” 

He glances over at the window and then quickly back to her. “I can see that.” 

She shakes her head to clear it, and then again when it doesn’t work. “I’m just- Master Luke was here. He had to tell me something.” 

Kylo stares at her in silence for several silence, clearly unsure of himself, and of her. He looks away, and then back again. “Do you want to tell me about it? It’s clearly bothering you.” 

“No it’s not, it’s just-” She cuts herself off and bites her lip, her throat starting to close up again. She’s not sure if she wants to tell him. She’s not sure if she ever wants to talk about it ever again. “I-” 

Kylo sighs and crouches down in front of her, putting himself lower than she is. Rey blinks, her vision suddenly very blurry. “Just like the first time.” 

He frowns. “What?” 

But she is already breathing hard, the tears coming all at once. It’s like someone is squeezing her lungs, pulling them apart. She wants to stand up and go into the bathroom, to get control of herself in private, but she can’t. 

“I’m- I’m sorry,” she manages, wiping frantically at her face. 

Kylo reaches up and takes her hand, pulls it back down to her lap and keeps holding it there. “It’s alright. Let it out.” 

Rey laughs and tries to stop laughing, and when she can’t it just makes her cry harder. She doubles over, forehead connecting with Kylo’s shoulder. She gasps, but he doesn’t shake her off. Rey feels him hesitate, and then his hand comes up to rest on her shoulder. It’s such a poor attempt at comfort it makes her smile, even through her tears and heaving sobs. 

Everything rushes up at once, like the dark waves of the ocean pushing her down. She thinks about her parents, faceless figures being pursued through the galaxy because of a feud they had no part in. She thinks of Li struggling to push Rey off off him, choking with the lack of air, Rey’s arm pressed into his windpipe. His face had been purple when she stopped. She thinks about Snoke’s body, and Kylo’s body, lying so close together, of trying to tap into the healing power of the Force and not immediately succeeding. She thinks of lightning flying from her fingers, of grinning, baring her teeth, when it did. She thinks about Kylo lying in the snow, his face bleeding and ruined, and wondering if she should kill him or not, the cold sinking down in her bones. Everything blends together, leaving her to try to sort through it, to make sense of it. 

After what seems like an eternity, Rey finally calms. She focuses on her breathing and steadies herself. Kylo doesn’t move, even when she turn her face into his neck, not wanting to sit up and have to face the real world, to face him. He just stays still, letting her lean on him, his hand on her shoulder at an awkward angle. Eventually, she knows that she has to move. Reminding herself of all the hard things she had done in her life compared to this one relatively easy thing, she does. 

Kylo doesn’t try to meet her eyes, but doesn’t stand either. “Better?”

Rey wipes at her face. “I’m sorry. Luke told me that my parents are dead, which I knew, but it was still…” 

“A shock,” he says, nodding. “What happened to them?” 

Rey shakes her head. “It's done.” 

“Alright.”

She looks away, and notices that it’s dark in the room. Kylo had been gone for a long time, she remembers. She turns back to him. “What were you doing?” 

Kylo frowns and looks up, meeting her eyes. “What?”

“You were out for a long time.” 

“Oh. Nothing.”

“Really?” 

He smirks and shakes his head. “I was meditating. Thinking.” 

“Me too. What were you thinking about?” 

“It’s not important.”

She smiles, or at least, tries to. “Tell me anyway, I need a distraction.” 

Kylo nods seriously and stands. Rey leans away, resting back against the chair. He goes and picks up the chair next to the bed, the same one Luke had sat in, and brings it over, sitting down across from her. “Do you know who Count Dooku was?” 

Rey blinks. “Um, yes. You were thinking about him?” 

“Thinking about something he wrote,” Kylo says, his gaze drifting towards the window. Rey wonders if he’s trying not to make her uncomfortable or if he’s feeling uncomfortable himself. Guilt claws at her. She had never cried in front of him before. She tilts her head, and wonders how many people had. 

“What was it?”

"He said, ‘The Jedi Order's problem is Yoda. No being can wield that kind of power for centuries without becoming complacent at best or corrupt at worst. He has no idea that it's overtaken him; he no longer sees all the little cumulative evils that the Republic tolerates and fosters, from slavery to endless wars, and he never asks, 'Why are we not acting to stop this?' Live alongside corruption for too long, and you no longer notice the stench,’” Kylo quotes, still looking out towards the city. 

Rey’s eyebrows shoot up. “Wow.” 

“I know. Apt, no?” He nods to the window. “This is one of the main cities he would have been referring to, a center of corruption.” 

“It’s...I can’t argue with it,” Rey responds, glancing toward the window as well. Outside, she can see hover transports moving between buildings, a hundred coordinated bees serving the hive. “But I think that all organizations have that problem, not just the Jedi.”

“All organizations have Yoda?” Kylo asks, smirking at her. 

She turns to give him a stern look. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” Kylo inclines his head. “I saw it within the First Order as well, just as we’ll probably see it in whatever we create.” 

Rey frowns. “Or we won’t. We’ll just blindly continue the pattern.” 

Kylo hums, tapping his fingers against the armrest. “But what is the alternative?” 

She shakes her head. “I don’t know. Asking for guidance maybe? Having people outside of the system to monitor it? I think that in this case, ‘Yoda’ can be any kind of standard. We have to figure out how to keep it alive so it doesn’t reach that point.”

“Well, not having a governing body that can live hundreds of years will likely help,” Kylo remarks, smirking again. 

Rey rolls her eyes at him. “I have to admit, even after everything I’ve seen and learned, it still makes me uncomfortable to admit that someone like Dooku can be right about certain things.” 

Kylo drops the smirk and shrugs. “Recognizing the worth within your enemy can be a great strength. It was one that Snoke never developed, but he encouraged it in us. Dooku was a highly educated man, a former Jedi. His insights were valuable.” 

“What happened to him?” 

“My grandfather killed him.”

“Oh,” Rey says, wondering if she had known that already. If she had, she certainly hadn’t thought about it in terms of Kylo’s grandfather. She tilts her head to the side, thinking of patterns and ancestors. “Like we killed Snoke.” 

Kylo glances over at her. “Darth- Anakin Skywalker killed Dooku at the behest of Palpatine to push him further into the Dark side. That’s not what is happening to you. We are building something entirely new.”

Rey nods. “I know. I just-”

“Doubt yourself. Still.”

Rey pauses to think. She shakes her head. “No, I know myself. I know that I want this badly, and I know that I’m- in some ways I’m always vulnerable. I don’t want to lose control of myself, ever. I don’t want to look up one day and realize that I let it all creep up on me.”

“Like I did.”

Rey’s eyebrows fly up. “Oh, I didn’t-”

“I know, you didn’t have to. It’s the truth.” He leans back in the chair, gaze fixed on some blank part of the wall. “I am exactly as Dooku warned, just not in the way he envisioned.” 

“This is why we need make our own way.” 

Kylo hums and doesn’t look up. 

“Well, if I find wisdom in what Dooku said,” Rey says, and smiles, trying to distract him like he distracted her. “Do you find Jedi insights valuable?” 

“Some.” Kylo looks back and mirrors her expression. “For example, ‘Do or do not, there is no try.’” 

Rey tilts her head. “Who said that?” 

Kylo frowns. “Yoda. My uncle- Luke used to tell it to us during training.” 

“Really? He never said it to me.” Rey leans back in her chair, considering it. 

Kylo waves a hand. “Maybe he changed his training strategy. It’s not like it worked particularly well the first time.” 

“Well of course not, that advice doesn’t make any sense.” 

Kylo frowns at her. “What do you mean?” 

Rey blinks back, confused. “Well, it seems to suggest that there is no such thing as effort, only success or failure.” 

“Of course, that’s the truth.” 

“No, it isn’t.” Rey shakes her head. “Failure isn’t always about will, it’s about ability, work. Sometimes we fail, but that doesn’t mean that the trying didn’t count.” 

“Yes, it does,” Kylo says, slowly. “Failure is indicative of weakness, not just of the body, but of the mind and spirit as well. We either do something, or we do not. Trying is irrelevant.” 

Rey stares at him. “I- do you really think that?” 

“Yes.” 

“So any time you’ve ever tried to do something, and failed, you think that it’s your fault?” 

Kylo blinks. “Well I-”

“Kylo, that’s awful. And it’s not true.” 

“Of course it’s true,” Kylo insists. “What else could it be?”

“Trying!” Rey says, a little too loudly. She presses a hand to her chest. “I’m sorry.” 

“It’s alright,” Kylo says, slowly. “It’s nice to not be the first one to get upset once in awhile.” 

Rey laughs, embarrassed and still a little horrified, imagining Kylo, or Ben even, living with this belief. “You do seem more calm in general recently.” 

Kylo looks away, and Rey thinks he might be embarrassed. “It could be the influence, or lack of influence, of certain parts of the force. The Dark side encourages the expression of emotion, but in excess it can lead to...outbursts. Of anger especially.”

“Um, right.” Rey looks away and then looks back. “Speaking of which, I’m sorry I cried on you.”

“It’s alright.”

“No it’s- I didn’t mean for you to see me like that. I don’t want you to think that I’m weak, or anything. I’m not, usually. You know that,” she says, rambling and unable to stop herself. 

Kylo shakes his head. “I don’t. I-” He stops and sighs, looking off towards the window. “I’ve been feeling a similar way. Sometimes.”

Rey stares at him. “Really? I didn’t-”

“You were asleep,” Kylo says shortly, still not looking at her. 

“Oh.”

“Yes. So, you don’t have to feel like it’s just you. It’s not.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I could have-” She waves her hand in the air. “Been there. Talked to you.”

He shrugs and looks back at her, meeting her eyes. “I know, and I know that you- that I can trust you. But some habits aren’t so easily broken. For example, you feeling ashamed at displaying strong emotion.”

Rey feels her face heat. “I don’t- it’s not like that.”

Kylo shakes his head. “No? You just apologized to me for crying over the fact that your parents died to protect you, and you did so at least three times before that.”

Rey blinks. “Well I just-”

“I know,” Kylo says quickly, his tone changing, becoming more intense, more imploring. Rey finds that she doesn't like it very much. “I was a Jedi student once too, remember?”

“I do. What a good thing for you to have left such a rotten system. I suppose that Snoke encouraged crying?” Rey shoots back, her voice a little sharper than she intended it to be. 

He flinches and Rey regrets her words immediately. “No. You don’t have to remind me that he was just as corrupt. I’m aware of it now.”

Rey shakes her head. “I know, I’m sorry. I think I’m still upset. I never expected to find out anything else about my family, and it just shocked me, I guess.”

Kylo waves a hand. “It’s fine. Do you feel better?”

“Yes,” Rey says, and finds that she means it now. “What about you?”

A line appears between Kylo’s eyebrows. “Me?”

“Do you feel better?”

“Better is a relative term,” Kylo responds stiffly. Rey just keeps looking at him, willing to wait him out. The silence stretches between them, unbroken like their share of the force. She know that he can tell when she actually wants to know, and eventually, he nods and answers her. “More and more so, but not completely.”

“Well I don’t know if anyone is completely ok, and especially not us.” 

Kylo huffs out a short laugh, shaking his head. “You’re probably right about that.” 

Rey smiles. She really is feeling better now. Sone of the familiar calm she had taken to associating with herself comes back. It's the way she had felt before she started any of this, before she had her doubts and acted on them. “I’m right about a lot of things.” 

“I know,” Kylo says, meeting her eyes again. 

Rey nods. “The next time you’re upset, will you wake me up?” 

Kylo hesitates, but holds her gaze. Rey waits calmly, just looking at him. Dark eyes, light skin, dark hair. Everything about him deals in contrasts. The scar she gave him stands out the most in low light, harsh against his skin. She watches him watch her, and wonders what he sees. 

Eventually, he nods. “Maybe.” 

She raises an eyebrow at him. “Alright. You could have just said yes or no.” 

“I could have.” He smiles at her, and it changes his entire face. “But I don’t deal in absolutes anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The quote from Dooku comes from official Star Wars novelizations and does not belong to me. 
> 
> Follow me on tumblr for updates and fun things (: paradiamond.tumblr.com


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